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SAMIZDAT

SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY

A0010000724954A

Art Dept.
700.947

RUSSIAN SAMIZDAT ART. 1986.

Seattle Public Library

Please note the date item is to be returned and
keep the above date due card in this pocket.

RUSSIAN

SAMIXDAT ART

Essays by John E. Bowlt, Szymon
Bojko, Rimma and Valery Gerlovin

Edited by Charles Doria

FEB 87 RKU

700.947

R92

a. /

WILLIS LOCKER & OWENS PUBLISHING
NEW YORK

Act Dept.

All materials by artists presently living in Russia have been printed without their permission
so they bear no legal responsibility.

Special thanks to Almuth Carstens, Keith Hammond, Birger Ollrogge, Pauline Ores, Steve
Roeser and Thomas Zummer.

Assembled by Rimma and Valery Gerlovin
Book design: Valery Gerlovin

Printed in the United States of America

Published by Willis Locker 8 Owens Publishing
71 Thompson Street, New York, NY 10012

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Main entry under title:

Russian samizdat art.

Bibliography: pp. 193-197
Includes index.

1. Dissident art — Soviet Union — Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Art, Modern 20th

century— Soviet Union— Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Bowlt, John E. II. Doria, Charles.
N6988.R854 1986 700' .947 85-52230

ISBN 0-930279-04-2
ISBN 0-930279-05-0 (pbk. )

ISBN 0-930279-03-4 (limited ed.)

Contents

Introduction 7

Charles Doria

A SLAP IN THE FACE OF PUBLIC TASTE: 9

The Art of the Book and the
Russian Avant-Garde

John E. Bowlt

THREE WAVES OF EMIGRATION 39

Szymon Bojko

SAMIZDAT ART 67

Rimma and Valery Gerlovin

Bibliography 193

Notes and Appendix 198

Notes on Contributors 304

Index 305

Introduction

Russian samizdat art, which will be defined in various ways here, signals a return
to our consciousness of an older tradition-that of the well-made object or book
that can be passed from hand to hand and contains multiples of meaning and
significance, depending upon who is performing the viewing or the handling.
This is something we can sense long ago in Homer’s description of Achilles’
shield or Helen of Troy’s tiara-a visible heirloom, a carrier of myth across genera-
tions and through national and cultural boundaries. This tradition, reborn in
Russia in the late fifties and sixties under conditions of material wellbeing but
spiritual and intellectual torment, is now making itself known in our part of the
world, thanks to this most recent wave of emigre artists and makers to reach
our shores. If, as the Gerlovins observe, Russia is so vast it has no need to count
its heroes, we must then count that loss our gain. But beyond the esthetic fer-
tilization and cross-pollination cycles of artistic emigration produce, whether
from Russia or any other country, we ought to notice the emphasis in samizdat
art-making on the object itself, which by its very existence serves as comment
upon and critique of the society that witnessed its birth and nurtures its creators.
The critical stance samizdat art imposes on its audience is unique. To see it, feel
and touch it, is to be pleasantly stung by the shock of revolution, alienation and
the will to change.

What, if any, might be the program behind samizdat remains, at least to
me, mysterious and serendipitously vague. Whether by chance or design, most
of the best samizdat art seems rooted in negative capability: an inability to ac-
cept things as they are, in this case Soviet-style reality, accompanied by an
earnest desire for change and renewal, but in what direction, into what untried
realms of thought and ideation, remains resolutely unclear.

Samizdat, then, represents not only a little-known tradition of art and art-
making in the West, but also a refreshing, non-commercial way of viewing the

world as a whole, sometimes romantic, at others enraged, polemical and anar-
chic Always, however, the artists and their pieces stand infused by a steady
stream of rigorous intellectual inquiry and esthetic experimentation. Indeed,
the very climate which saw samizdat’s creation and development required that
its artists and makers innovate constantly from such unpromising materials as
used x-ray film and stale black bread. Make it new in a land that believes in
but will not practice or unleash the radiance inherent in its social and political
history and constitution-a situation not all that unfamiliar to those of us corn
in the USA.

To further introduce the writers and artists appearing here would, at this
point, add nothing and possibly even detract from the business at hand, for this
book belongs to them. However, we should notice that while Szymon Bojko nar-
rates the history of Russian artistic emigration in this century, John Bowlt gives
us the same story from an art-historical perspective Rimma and Valery Gerlovin,
though, take us personally into the studios and workshops of samizdat art, con-
duct revealing and intimate interviews with the artists, and in general bring
to light a wealth of tales from the artistic establishments and undergrounds of
Moscow and Leningrad. Let us hope these creators and their creations find fer-
tile soil here, and the long-sought personal freedom to create in peace, while
they struggle to find and shape an audience as astute and sympathetic as the
one they remember from their land of origin and still in many ways celebrate.

Charles Doria

New York City

A SLAP IN THE FACE
OF PUBLIC TASTE:

THE ART OF THE BOOK AND THE
RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE

John E. Bowlt

To write about the books compiled and illustrated by the Russian avant-garde-
that constellation of artists and ideas that transformed the evolution of Russian
art in the 1 91 Os and 1 920s -is not an easy task. Practically all the primary and
secondary members of that group of movements such as David and Vladimir
Burliuk, Natalia Goncharova, Vasilii Kandinsky, Mikhail Larionov, El Lissitzky, Kazimir
Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko, Olga Rozanova, Varvara Stepanova, Vladimir
Tatlin-were involved in book design and/or illustration and, thereby, moved in
close contact with the radical poets of that time such as Elena Guro, Velimir
Khlebnikov, Alexei Kruchenykh and Vladimir Mayakovsky. Although some
scholarly research has been undertaken in the documentation and assess-
ment of this discipline, 1 many avenues of enquiry have yet to be pursued: for
example, a comprehensive directory to the Cubo-Futurist, Suprematist and
Constructivist booklets is still lacking, and information on the materials pub-
lished outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg/Leningrad, e.g. in the Ukraine and
Georgia, is still hard to come by. 2 Appreciation is hampered still further by the
inadequacy of the terminology used in such analyses, by the indistinct notion
of what exactly constituted a book during the avant-garde period and by the
relative scarcity of works owing to their limited editions (e.g. 300 copies) and
also to the frequent differences and discrepancies between one copy and
the next. 3

In spite of these difficulties, the illustrated booklets of the Cubo-Futurists
are alluring, not just because they entertain through shock and jocularity in their
words and images, but also because they can be viewed as an intimate
gallery of modern Russian art-containing all the isms (and more) that Hans Arp
and El Lissitzky described in 1924. Not only do the same stylistic principles
appear concurrently in the paintings and book illustrations of, for example,
D Burliuk, Larionov and Malevich, but also the book illustrations themselves are
sometimes paraphrases or “miniaturizations" of major paintings (as in the case
of some of Malevich’s graphic contributions of 191 3-14). In the latter case, these
representations often have no direct reference to the text and are to be viewed
as visual accompaniments rather than as illustrations in the conventional sense
(cf. Malevich’s lithograph of a woman, reaping inside the first edition of fioe/The
Three/by Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh and Guro/St. Petersburg, 191 3). Such prints may
be “irrelevant”, but, then, alogicality was an active ingredient of avant-garde
literature and art, and the deliberate insertion of the non-sequitur constituted
a direct affront to the reading public-nurtured on the Victorian cultural and

Croup photograph of (left to right) Mikhail Matiushin, Alexei Kruchenykh, Pavel
Filonov, Iosif Shkolnik, and Kazimir Malevich.

social tradition of order, sequence and explicability.

Even a cursory glance at the key publications of the Russian Cubo-
Futurists (e.g. \/zorvo//Explodity/by Kruchenykh with illustrations by Goncharova,
Nikolai Kulbin, Malevich and Rozanova/St. R, 191 3/S/ovo kak tokovoe/The Word
as Such/by Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov with illustrations by Malevich and
Rozanova/M., 191 3/, and ftoros/a/a/Piglets/by Zina V. and Kruchenykh with cover
by Malevich/St. P., 1913) demonstrates immediately sharp contrasts with
preceding artistic and typographical methods. 5 Generally speaking, it might
be asserted that, in the 19th century, the prose and poetry illustration had been
little more than that, i.e. a handmaiden to the text, desirable, but not indispen-
sable. The avant-garde book, however, used the “illustration” as a component
part of the text and often the work could not function without the image and
vice versa. Of course, this proximity and frequent interpenetration of the two
media was not altogether new in the tradition of book design, for we can trace
similar harmonies and disharmonies in medieval illuminated manuscripts and
in the 18th and 19th century broadsheet (American and Russian). Indeed, the

Kazimir Malevich: Portrait of a Builder Completed, 1913. Lithograph inserted
between pp. 2 and 3 of the first edition of Porosiata [Piglets] by Alexei Kruchenykh
and Zina V., St. Petersburg: EUY, 1913.

Kazimir Malevich: Portrait of Ivan Kiiun, 1911. Oil. Russian Museum, Leningrad.

convention of the Russian lubok (the cheap, handcolored broadsheet) is of
particular importance to the context of the Cubo-Futurist book and, for exam-

f^' tl0ns of the Kru chenykh/Khlebnikov tgravadu (A Game in Hell, M
1912, 191 3) 6 owe much to the devices of th e lubok.

Furthermore, and paradoxically, even though the Cubo-Futurists wished
to desanctify art (hence the pigs and bad words in some of Larionov’s paint-
ings or the Jewish in-jokes in Chagall’s)/ they were no less elitist, no less
sophisticated, no less esoteric than their immediate literary and artistic
orebears, the Symbolists: their books, too, were published in miniscule editions
they were often incomprehensible, and decipherment of their messages relied
° n a A kee t n understanding of contemporary cultural developments in Russia and
the West. The Cubo-Futurists may have condemned the Decadent poets
Konstantin Balmont and Valerii Briusov for their ’’perfumed lechery” and “paper
armor” (although Briusov was an avid collector of their books) 8 and have
derided Mikhail Vrubel’s “vain attempts at genius,” 9 but, in actual fact they
were much obliged to the heritage of the fin de siecie. As the critic Genrikh
Tasteven once wrote, the Futurists were simply the “maximalists” of the

Ka.imir Malevich: Illustration for the second edition of fgra v adu [A Game in Helll
by Alexei Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov, Moscow: Kusmin and Dolinsky, 1914 .

There were many philosophical and esthetic ideas that linked the avant-
garde with the Symbolists-interest in artistic synthesis (the illustrated book is
a clear example of this), the awareness of abstract art as a potential, subse-
quent development, the realization that Russian culture was undergoing a
renaissance and that this, in turn, perhaps signified and anticipated a transfor-
mation of a broader, social kind. Both camps subscribed to these positions and
in this sense Tasteven's rhetorical assertion is justifiable. But the Cubo-Futurists
also entertained ideas and experiences that were foreign to the Symbolists:
they did not support moderation and elegance, they did not, by and large, sym-
pathize with the Symbolists’ mystical impulses, they no longer respected the
reader, and they certainly did not possess the encyclopedic knowledge and
worldly wisdom of writers such as Andrei Bely and Briusov.

As far as the look of the book is concerned, the Cubo-Futurists can rarely
be confused with the Symbolists. Their raucous titles (e.g. Moloko kobylets /Milk
of Mares/ by Khlebnikov with illustrations by the Burliuks and Alexandra Exter /M.,
1914/, Tango s korovami /Tango with Cows/ by Vasilil Kamensky with illustrations
by the Burliuks /M., 1914/, Futuristy. Rykaiushchii parnas /The Futurists. Roaring Par-
nasus / by D. Burliuk and others with illustrations by D. Burliuk, Pavel Filonov and

Lubok [cheap, handcolored print] of ca. 1850 entitled Punishments Inf lifted on a
Wicked Rith Man. Lithograph.

Ivan Puni: Relief with a Plate, 1*19. Oil, plate, board. Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart.

Ivan Puni / St. R, 1 91 4/), their reliance on accident and the spontaneous gesture
(e.g. the "nonsensical” mutation of the word kniga /book/ into gniga /gook/ in
Kruchenykh's Zaumnaia gniga /Transrational Gook, M„ 1916, with illustrations by
Rozanova/ which, with its absurd button sewn on to the cover reminds us of Puni’s
Dada painting with a plate of 1919)," the eccentric distribution of characters
on the page as in Kruchenykh’s Vzorval, and the deliberate interchanges of
roles (for example, D. Burliuk signed his two articles on Cubism and texture in
Poshchechina obshchestvennomu vkusu /A Slap in the Face of Public Taste /M„
191 3/N/ikolai/Burliuk)-such activities differ immediately from the staid sobrie-
ty of the fin de siecie stylists such as Alexandre Benois and Konstantin Somov. But
let us digress for a moment and dwell on this particular tradition which, while
alien to the experimentation of the avant-garde, actually provided it with much
vitality and continued to develop with it right until the 1930s. We have to be
familiar with this tradition in order to better understand the Cubo-Futurist book.

The “un-Futurist” book, i.e. the fine edition, reached its apogee in Russia
just before and after 191 7, when designers such as Benois, Sergei Chekhonin,

Olga Rozanova: cover for the book Zaumnaia gniga [Transrational Cook] by Alexei p
Kruchenykh and Aliagrov, Moscow, 1*15 (1916 on cover). Collage.

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1903.

Page from the magazine Mir iskusstva [The World of Art], St. Petersburg, 1902,
Vol. 8. The text is part of Vasilii Rozanov's article entitled "Florence"; the ornament
is by Alexandre Benois.

Leon Bakst: cover for a brochure advertizing the magazine Mir iskusstva, St.
Petersburg, 1903.

Mstislav Dobujinsky, Dmitrii Mitrokhin, Georgii (Yurii) Narbut and Somov replaced
the often excessive ornamentation of the Victorian book with restrained and
elegant filigrees. This trend was encouraged by a number of collectors and
patrons’ societies in St. Petersburg, particularly by the St. Eugenia Society and
Vasilii A. Vereshchagin’s Circle of Lovers of Russian Fine Editions. The latter was
responsible, for example, for 1. 1. Leman's impressive Graviura i litografiia. Ocherki
istroii i tekhniki (Engraving and Lithography. Outlines of their History and Techni-
que, St. R, 1 91 3). The increased interest in the limited, deluxe book parallelled the
general refurbishment of the Russian decorative arts, and often the book
designers of this period were also active as stage, fashion, and porcelain
designers. For example, Benois, who was responsible for many illustrations and
vignettes in the journals Mir iskusstva (The World of Art, St.R, 1 898-1 904), Zolotoe

runo (The Golden Fleece, M., 1906-09), Starye gody (Bygone Years, St. R,
1907-16) and Apollon (Apollo, St. P., 1909-1 7) 12 , also created sets and
costumes for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and Chekhonin, who produced
many charming illustrations and covers for children's stories, became head of
the Lomonosov Porcelain Factory in 1918.

The reassessment of the book as an artifact, and the rapid evolution of
the art of fine design were occasioned in part by the rediscovery of 1 8th and 1 9th
century Russian engravers, draftsmen, architects, and decorators. Even though
the technical level was uneven, it did constitute a tradition that was developed
and enriched by artists such as Benois, Ivan Bilibin and Dobujinsky during the
early 20th century.' 3 They excelled in all print media-engraving, etching,
xylography, zincography, linocut, they organized special exhibitions to propa-
gate their achievements and published specialist journals on the graphic arts.
During the 1900s through the 1920s, many collections of original engravings

Konstantin Somov: illustration for Le Livre de la Marquise, Pctrograd: Golike and
Vilborg, 1918, p. 157.

Konstantin Somov: illustration for Le Livre de la Marquise, Planned luxury edition,
Moscow, 1916. Formerly in the collection of Vladimir Girshman, Moscow.

by “elegant" artists appeared in the two capitals. Published for the most part in
very small, exquisite editions, these books and folios were collectors' items, in-
tended for a limited clientele and covering themes that tended to elicit a
nostalgia for the past, a curiosity about exotic countries or a strong erotic
response. Typical of this vogue was Somov’s cycle of illustrations for Le Livre de
la Marquise (first published in 1908) 14 and the album of linocuts by Sergei
Kolesnikov called Mongoliia (Mongolia, M., 1922), and Ivan Pavlov’s Ugolki
Moskvy (Corners of Moscow, M, n.d.). The culmination of this unprecedented in-
terest in the fine edition was the exhibition “The Graphic Arts in the USSR
1917-1927” at the Academy of Arts, Leningrad in 1927 (catalog by Erik Goller-
bakh and Vsevolod Voinov) and Viacheslav Polonsky’s solid monograph
Masterasovremennoigraviuryigrafiki (Masters of Contemporary Engraving and
Graphics, L„ 1928). However, neither of these sources referred to avant-garde
book design, i.e. to such extraordinary typographical constructions as Pomada
(Pomade by Kruchenykh with illustrations by Larionov, M„ 1913), Dokhlaialuna
(Croaked Moon by D. Burliuk et al. with illustrations by D Burliuk et al., M., 191 3),
and Vladimir Mayakovsky's Vladimir Mayakovsky: Tragediia (Vladimir Mayakov-
sky: A Tragedy with illustrations by Q and V. Burliuk, M„ 1 91 4). It was as if this alter-
native tradition had not existed, as if, by tacit agreement, the impropriety,
disorderliness and vulgarity of the avant-garde book were considered unworthy
of scholarly investigation. The conspiracy of silence that removed discussion of
the avant-garde from Soviet culture was, therefore, inaugurated by intelligent,
academic critics of the time and not necessarily by pen-pushers from Stalin’s
cultural bureaucracy.

The graphic attainments of Benois, Chekhonin, Somov may delight the
eye and titillate the senses, but their moderation and good taste were foreign
to the avant-garde. True, artists such as the Burliuks, Goncharova, Larionov and
Malevich used and abused the preceding conventions, but they did not
espouse a Realist, illusionistic style and reacted immediately to the standard
kind of book illustration whether satirical (as, for example, Alexander Agin’s 1 846
caricatures for Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls ) or documentary (as, for example,
Ilia Repin’s pieces for Scribner’s Magazine in 1892). On the other hand, these
angry young men took full advantage of the Tsar’s proclamation of civil liber-
ties, including freeedom of the press, issued in 1905. Before that time,
jurisprudentialty, the book designs and other antics of the Cubo-Futurists would
have been unthinkable in a society that, in 1 890, proscribed a picture of Cupid
"because the genitals can be seen” and in 1902 forbade newspapers to
reproduce portraits of Tolstoi “forever.” 15 The Cubo-Futurists also exploited the
Russian book market and publishing world which, from the late 1 9th century on-
wards, had expanded and advanced by leaps and bounds: with the advent
of Symbolism came the little magazine, the professional reviewer, the intimate
edition and the vanity press. In other words, by ca. 1 900 Russia already possess-

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David Burliuk: "The Old Man with Cats". Page for Vladimir Mayakovsky: Vladimir
Mayakovsky. Tragedlla, Moscow: Gileia, 1914.

ed the literary apparatus that, whether amicable or hostile, played a key role
in the Cubo-Futurist endeavor. After all, it was precisely this community that D.
Burliuk and his colleagues had in mind when they issued their Slap in the Face
of Public Taste in December, 1912, declaring that “The Academy and Pushkin
are more incomprehensible than hieroglyphics.” 16

Within the rhetoric and sensationalism of the Russian avant-garde there
were many serious artistic ideas that were to have particular importance for the
development of 20th century art in general, but there were also vulgar gestures,
shock tactics and much foul language that were used to shake the foundations
of the Russian establishment. For example, Malevich and his friends once pos-
ed for a group photograph beneath a grand piano suspended from the ceil-
ing upside down; Kamensky showed a mousetrap at an art exhibition in
Moscow in 1 91 5; Goncharova, Larionov and others walked about Moscow with
their faces decorated with Rayonist designs; Mayakovsky donned his famous
yellow vest and paraded through downtown Moscow-, Kruchenykh threw hot tea
into the laps of his audience. Such highjinks formed the charged, emotional at-

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Zinovii Grzhebin: Eagle-Werewolf or Oomesth and Foreign Polity. This satirical
drawing (the meaning becomes clear when the “eagle" is turned upside down) was
published in the journal Zhupel [Bugbear], St. Petersburg, 1905, No. I.

Nikolai Kulbin: illustration for Nikolai Evreinov's study of the modern theater, Teatr
dlla sebla (The Theater for Itself), Petrograd: Pervaya zhenskaia tipograpfiia,
1915, Vol. I, p. 65

mosphere in which the Cubo-Futurist booklets were published.

But once again we may question the apparent iconoclastic novelty of
these publications. Hadn’t the radical, revolutionary magazines of 1905-06,
illustrated by artists such as Bilibin, Dobujinsky and Zinovii Grzhebin been just as
scandalous? What could have been a sharper rebuttal of public taste than
Grzhebin’s depiction of the Tsar’s hind quarters called Eagle-Werewolf in 1 905?
Such illustrations and the titles of the journals themselves (e.g. Zhupel /Bugbear/,
St.P., 1905-06 or Adskaia Bomba /Hellish Bomb, Stavropol, 1907) served as im-
portant precedents to the often shocking pieces by the Burliuks and their col-
leagues, even though their emphasis was on esthetic innovation and not on
political commitment. During the period of social reaction (1908-14) caricature
and parody of this kind did not disappear, although the focus of attention
changed from the government structure to the bourgeois household or to the
world of artists and literati. Among the journals that favored this inclination were
Satirikon (Satyricon, St.R, 1908-13) and its successor Novyi Satirikon (New
Satyricon, St.R, 1914-18), and some of the artists who worked for them such as
Vladimir Lebedev, Re-mi (pseudonym of Nikolai Remizov) and Mayakovsky

quickly gained a reputation for their comic if sometimes grotesque, caricatures
of contemporaries and cartoons of conventional values. A very amusing exam-
ple of this kind of production is the set of parodies of famous paintings published
in St. Petersburg in 1 91 2 which includes Remizov's bizarre rendering of the Mona
Lisa. 17 Surely, this kind of image was just as provocative as throwing “Pushkin,
Dostoevsky, Tolstoi, et al„ et al„ overboard from the Ship of Modernity,” 18 or
Malevich’s own interpretation of the Mona Lisa in 1914. 19

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ib-laiopb Tpeaoflb pyay nptuiowouiv

Ivan Crabovsky and N.C. Shebuev: parody on the Tsar's Proclamation of Civil
Liberties, 1905. The piece was published in the journal Pulemet [Machine-Gun], St.
Petersburg, 1905, No. 1.

1 ACM HOE

&: VLltCut

Re-mi (Nikolai Remizov): Mona Lisa. Ths caricature was published in Alexei Radakov
et al.: Sokrovishcha iskusstv, St. Petersburg: Kernfeld, 1*11, unpaginated.

Kaximir Malevich: Composition with Mona Lisa, 1914. Oil. Private collection,
Leningrad.

Just as the new artists parodied the hallowed image of the Mona Lisa
and, thereby, the entire esthetic of high art, so they desecrated the book. Their
publications were intended not only to shock the bourgeoisie by their scan-
dalous and often erotic allusions, but also to undermine the conventional no-
tion of the book as a fine edition, expensive, scholarly, prestigious. The Burliuks,
Goncharova, Larionov, Malevich, Rozanova and their fellow illustrators rejected
the esthetic of the fin de siecle book with its leather Art Nouveau covers, its
serpentine illustrations and parchment paper, and returned the book to the
status of the lubok. Instead of being an object of discernment and esteem, the
book now became a joke, instead of being a symbol of truth and permanence,
it was now a throwaway item, a piece of ephemera. Instead of being a logical,
readable experience, "its words,” as Kruchenykh wrote in Telile (illustrated by
Rozanova and Kulbin, St.R, 1914), "have no definite meaning’;' 20 instead of be-
ing a source of solace, it now attacked the reader’s peace of mind and
demanded an active, creative involvement. Just as the old lubki parodied im-

portant personages and social foibles of the time, interpreting them for an il-
literate or semi-literate consumer, so the Cubo-Futurist booklets followed similar
aims, relying on handwritten script and rude illustrations, incorporating mistakes
in spelling and grammar and other typographical “mistakes,” and using cheap
paper (the first issue of Sadoksudei /A Trap for Judges, St.P., 1910/ was actually
printed on wallpaper). As a matter of fact, Malevich’s theoretical tract on
Suprematism, O novykh sistemakh viskusstve (On New Systems in Art), published
in Vitebsk in 1919, relates directly to this Cubo-Futurist esthetic of book produc-
tion: its lithographed clumsy script, its crossings-out and slips of the pen, its incon-
gruous "illustrations” of geometric shapes recall the graphic devices of
Poluzhivoi (Half-Alive by Kruchenykh with illustrations by Larionov, M., 191 3) and
Vozropshchem (Let’s Grumble by Kruchenykh with illustrations by Malevich and
Rozanova, St.P., 1913).

The methods mentioned above were employed by the avant-garde not
only to ruffle the complacency of Russian society. They also reflected a sincere
wish on the part of the Cubo-Futurists to combine the literary and the visual arts.
If the French Cubists attempted this in their incorporation of letter and word col-

tercet

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Kruchenykh, Moscow: Kuzmin and Belinsky, 1913. Lithograph.

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Natalia Goncharova: illustration for Vertogradari nad loxami [Gardeners over the
Vines] by Sergei Bobrov, Moscow: Lirika, 1913. Lithographs in color.

lages into their paintings or if Apollinaire achieved a successful marriage of
poetry and visual design in his Calligrammes of 1914-1 7, the Russians resolved
the issue in their own way. First of all, it is worth remembering that many of the
Cubo-Futurist poets-Kamensky, Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh, Mayakovsky, D Burliuk—
were also painters and, in some cases, attended art school. Conversely, a
number of the artists, including Filonov, Malevich, Rozanova and Stepanova
tried their hand at poetry. Not surprisingly, therefore, the creators of the Cubo-
Futurist booklets gave simultaneous attention to the aural and the visual
perceptions of the word. For example, Malevich designed his devils for Igra v
adu as a vertical accompaniment to the downward reading of the poetry.
Filonov also achieved a remarkable conjunction of artistic and literary devices
in his designs for Khlebnikov's Izbornik stikhov (Selection of Poetry also illustrated
by N. Burliuk and Malevich, St.P., 1914). This includes not only two illustrations by
Filonov, but also his own calligraphy whereby he tried to match Khlebnikov’s
often abstruse and archaic vocabulary by a more accessible visual entertain-
ment in the form of ideograms; for example, he drew the first letter of the word
rusalka as a barebreasted mermaid and suspended the middle letter of the
verb “fly away" above the rest of the word. Consequently, Filonov (and
Malevich) is playing a calculated game with the viewer, inviting us to par-
ticipate dynamically in the perception of the artifact-something that Lissitzky
developed with his “architecture of the book” in the 1920s.

At this juncture it might be appropriate to concentrate on key contribu-
tions by two or three of the leading book illustrators of the avant-garde in order
to discover how they interpreted and applied particular principles of design:
Goncharova, Larionov, Malevich, Rozanova and Lissitzky are of primary rele-
vance to the issue at hand.

In no small degree, Goncharova and Larionov were responsible for the
“coming of age” of Russian art in ca. 191 0, and their blending of Western influ-
ences (especially from Gauguin and Matisse) with domestic stimuli (especially
folk art) is one of the most remarkable attainments in early 20th century Russian
culture. In challenging Parisian supremacy, they focused attention on what they
argued were esthetic concepts and objects of no less a value than those of
Post-Impressionism and Cubism. They maintained that their exuberance and
vitality derived in part, at least, from indigenous and also from Eastern sources:
"Primitive art forms-icons, lubki, trays, signboards, fabrics of the East, etc.,” they
asserted, "these are specimens of genuine value and painterly beauty.” 21
Goncharova and Larionov, in particular, began to give attention to such art
forms as early as 1907-08 and injected new energy into Russian painting just
as the previous dominant trend, Symbolism, was entering a state of decline.
Perhaps their concentration on folk art was also, in part, a result of the
democratic impulse of the 1905-06 revolution, although, by and large, the
pioneers of the Russian avant-garde were apolitical, at least before the Oc-

tober Revolution, and they gave little thought to ideological social systems.

As the Neo-Primitivist movement developed after 1908, so its proponents
looked ever more intently at their domestic roots, flaunted their derision of the
West and issued xenophobic claims to the effect that “Neo-Primitivism is a pro-
foundly national phenomenon” or "The lubok presents other constructions that
are much more complicated than the visions of Picasso and Braque." 22 This
esthetic Slavophilism found dramatic visual extensions in the paintings, draw-
ings and book illustrations of 1 91 0-1 3 and in the propagation through societies
and exhibitions organized by Larionov and his colleagues (such as the 1 91 0-1 1
showings of the ‘Jack of Diamonds" in Moscow). Moreover, as this enthusiasm
for “things Russian” increased, so the awareness of Russia’s alleged derivation
from Oriental culture also became attractive. That is why Goncharova, in the
preface to the catalog of her one woman exhibition in Moscow in 1 91 3 could
affirm that:

The Impressionists are from the Japanese. The Synthetists, Gauguin, from
India spoiled by its early renaissance. From the islands of Tahiti, he ap-
prehended nothing, apart from a tangible type of woman. Matisse-
Chinese painting. The Cubists-Blacks (Madagascar), Aztecs. As for the
past-certain historians are sadly mistaken in deducing a Romanesque in-
fluence, even a German influence, on our icons. 23

Goncharova and Larionov tried to prove their assumption by categoriz-
ing certain Russian artifacts, especially lubki, along with Japanese, Chinese Per-
sian, Hindu and Tartar works, as they did, for example, at the “Exhibition of Icons
and Lubkr in Moscow in 1 91 3. We should not be surprised, therefore, to see direct
paraphrases of Russian lubki and other pieces of folk art in Goncharova’s and
Larionov’s book illustrations of 1912-1 3. Goncharova’s pieces in Igra vadu (1912),
for example, including the cover, derive immediately from 19th-century
lithographic broadsides such as Punishments Inflicted on a Wicked Rich Man of
the 1 850s. At the same time, both artists were acutely aware of Western
developments, especially Italian Futurism, and not only did Larionov repeat
panegyrical statements about the modern city, but he also expanded the
Futurists’ interests in energy, speed, and the cinema into his theory of Rayonism
(1912-13) dependent on only the “laws germane to painting: colored line and
texture.” 24 Even though Goncharova and Larionov were skeptical of their Italian
colleagues, they were surely paraphrasing Carra and Severini in their Rayonist
illustrations to Sergei Bobrov’s Vertogradari nad lozami (Gardeners over the
Vines, M„ 1913, illustrated by Goncharova) and Kruchenykh’s Starinnaia liubov
(Old-time Love, M., 1912, illustrated by Larionov). Indeed, Larionov, at least, had
no qualms about borrowing from the Italians-as he did in his designs for Sergei
Diaghilev’s projected production of Histoires Naturelles in 1916. Quite justifiably,
Fortunato Depero accused Larionov of “arranging my designs in his own man-

ner plagiarizing them completely .” 25

Goncharova and Larionov were pioneers in the development of avant-
garde design, although their concentration on the Cubo-Futurist book lasted

ftTt'VOty* EH fr T>
J&‘j0Aft4HUKOrb

Natalia Goncharova: collage cover for Mirskontsa [Worldback wards] by Velimir
Khlebnikov and Alexei Kruchenykh, Moscow: Kuzmin and Dolinsky, 1913.

only two years, since, beginning in 1 9 1 4, they gave increasing attention to the
stage. The books that they chose to illustrate later such as Tsar Saltan (Paris, 1922,
illustrated by Goncharova), while vivid and charming, had none of the pro-
vocative elan identifiable with Mirskontsa (Worldbackwards, M., 1912 by
Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov with illustrations by Gonacharova, Larionov Tatlin
and I. Rogovin), Pustynniki (Hermits, M„ 1913, by Kruchenykh with illustrations by
Goncharova), and, of course, Igra vadu. On the other hand, Goncharova and
Larionov prepared the way for other talented designers, especially Malevich
who, in his paintings and designs, owed an appreciable debt to Neo-Primitivism
trough Goncharova, Malevich reached his sculptural sturdy rendering
of the human body present in works such as the costumes for Victory over the
Sun (191 3) or the peasant woman on the cover of Troe (The Three, St. 1913, by
Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh and Guro). Malevich even repeated certain subjects
favored by Goncharova. His lithograph called Death of a Man Simultaneous-
ly in an Airplane and at the Railroad ( 191 3), for example, which appeared in
Vzorval, matches Goncharova's painting Airplane above a Train of the same
year, 6 and his untitled lithograph of a carriage in motion in Troe brings to mind
Goncharova’s Cyclist of 1912-13 (Russian Museum, Leningrad). Both works of
course, find a common counterpart in Italian Futurism (cf. Boccioni’s Dynamism
of a Cyclist of 191 3 in the Mattioli Collection, Milan).

It is relevant to mention here that Rozanova, too, was deeply impressed
by Goncharova, and her designs for the second edition of /gravadu (1914) are
clearly inspired by Goncharova's drawings for the first edition. Similarly,
Rozanova experienced the effect of Italian Futurism, extending the cult of the
machine to her industrial paintings and prints of 191 3-14. Rozanova’s cover for
Vzorval of 1 9 1 3 brings to mind her contemporary paintings such as The factory
and the Bridge ( Museum of Modern Art, New York; Gift of the McCrary Corpora-
tion, New York). It was a short move from these works to Rozanova's own formu-
lation of abstract art dependent upon the mechanical, functional components
of the material itself. Rozanova was one of the first avant-garde artists to ad-
vocate an art form based only on the interplay of its intrinsic elements, and her
illustrations (with Kruchenykh) of Vselenskaia voina (Universal War, Petrograd,
1916) mark the highpoint of this “era of purely artistic achievements.” 27 Using a
sequence of twelve non-figurative, colored collages, Rozanova and
Kruchenykh “illustrated” a book that had no text. These floating cutouts appear
as pictures in miniature, extensions of Rozanova’s own experimental painting
and drawing, especially her Suprematist work such as Non-Objective Composi-
tion (ca. 1916, Russian Museum, Leningrad). Vselenskaia voina was one of two
portfolios that Rozanova and Kruchenykh worked on in 1916, the other being
War. The latter, carrying concrete references to the miliary events, was in the
same vein as Goncharova’s Voina: Misticheskie obrazy voiny (War: Mystical Im-
ages of the War, M„ 1 9 1 4) and Filonov’s Propeven o prorosli mirovoi (Chant of

El Lissitzky: Proun from I Kestnermappe, Hannovert Ludwig Ey, 1923. Lithograph
with collage.

Universal Flowering, Petrograd, 1915), whereas Vselenskaia voina was an
“abstract” interpretation. True, in their dadaistic shifts and asymmetries, these
paper collages sometimes suggest particular objects, but they can hardly be
construed as guns, soldiers or angels of war. By the time she had arrived at this
remarkable resolution, Rozanova had had considerable experience of avant-
garde book design, making her debut in the March, 1913 issue of Soiuz
molodezhi (Union of Youth, St.R) and in the second edition of Igravadu- in which
her dynamic compositions are remarkably close to those of the Ukrainian ar-
tist Alexander Bogomazov. In 1914 she also contributed to the
Kruchenykh/Khlebnikov Te li le and then, in 1915, to th eZaumnaia gniga.

Perhaps the real fascination of the Rozanova/Kruchenykh Vselenskaia
voina lies in the fact that it both drew upon Malevich’s Suprematist system and
also pointed forward to other developments in the concept of the book: for ex-
ample, as a cycle of abstract compositions, Vselenskaia voina reminds us of
other abstract sequences such as Malevich’s 34 risunka (34 Drawings, Vitebsk,
1921 ) and Lissitzky’s Proun folio of 1920-22. 28 The exciting album 34 risunka pro-

vides a survey and graphic paraphrase of Malevich's major Suprematist paint-
ings of 1915 onwards. Each image in this collection relates, therefore, to a similar
painting. 29 But these black and white images are more than just graphic
reproductions of particular canvasses-they are experiments in the art of
abstract lithography. If the Suprematist paintings use the intrinsic elements of
painting, these lithographed forms also exploit the essential ingredients of the
lithographic art-black and white contrast, tonal gradation, textures. Indeed,
what D Burliuk once categorized as basic painterly textures can almost be ap-
plied to the diverse surfaces of 34 risunka-.

The Plane of a picture can be:

A. Even, and B. Uneven .

Structure of a picture’s surface:

I. Granular.

II. Fibrous.

III. Lamellar. 30

One probable reason for the artistic success of 34 risunka (and of Malevich’s O
novykh sistemakh viskusstve ) is that Lissitzky, then a follower of Malevich, was in
charge of the lithograph workshop at the Vitebsk Popular Art Institute where
Malevich was director from 1 9 1 9 to 1 922; and it is rumored that Lissitzky himself
lithographed these sheets. The Vitebsk lithography workshop was responsible
for a number of interesting lithographic and hectographic publications, all in-
spired by Malevich and all now exceedingly rare. Mention should be made of
the journals AERO and Put Unovisa (Path of Unovis), and Vera Ermolaeva’s wood-

cut design for the February, 1920 production of Victory over the Sun in
Vitebsk. 3 '

That Lissitzky was deeply influenced by his proximity to Malevich in
Vitebsk in 1919-20 can be seen when we compare his designs for Yiddish tales
such as The Bear (Kiev, 1918) and his cover for Jewish Folk Tales for Children (Kiev,
1919) 32 with his Pro dva kvadrata (About Two Squares), conceived in Vitebsk in
1920 and published in Berlin in 1922-a Constructivist masterpiece. This extra-
ordinary “biblio-construction,” which contains the blatant paradox “Don’t
read-Take bits of paper, matchsticks, bits of wood, compose, paint, build,” must
be experienced as a poster or billboard or even as a movie rather than as a
book. Instead of laboriously assimilating lines of letters in sequence, the eye im-
mediately grasps the semantic value of each frame through the simple con-
trasts of black and white (with flashes of red)” within the space of the page. The
principles of the Proun 33 -the rejection of the axis, the convenience of entering
the work at any junction-are equally active here. Each page can be accepted
as a separate unit, independent of the story; typography is as much a complex

of geometric forms as a sequence of linguistic signs; there is no ending- further”
is the last word.

The notion of the book as an artistic totality, catering equally to the senses

of sight and hearing was, of course, not altogether new. Sonia Delaunay and
Blaise Cendrars had experimented with it in their collective publication La Prose
du trans-siberien et de la Petite Jehanne de France (Paris, 1913) which, as a mat-
ter of fact, was well known in St. Petersburg; Filonov, Rozanova and Stepanova
approached the concept in their works (cf. Stepanova’s transrational book of
verse and collages, Gaust chaba, M., 1919). But as in the case of his Prouns, Lissit-
zky reprocessed the sometimes tentative, imprecise ideas of his colleagues and
took them to a new level of artistry. His several book and magazine covers of the
early 1920s such as Veshch/Gegenstand/Objet (Berlin, 1922) and Olga Forsh’s
play Rawi (The Rabbi, Berlin, 1 922) are constructed on the same principles as
Pro dva kvadrata, although less exuberantly. As in the title-page to the children’s
tale, a strong diagonal is used to connect statements on the cover of Veshch-,

Kazimir Malevich: Dynamic Suprematism, 1915. Oil. Ludwig Museum, Cologne.

Kazimir Malevich: image from Suprematism, 34 rlsunka [Suprematism. 34 Draw-
ings] by Kazimir Malevich, Vitebsk, 1931 (1930 on cover). Lithograph.

the P (surely, Lissitzky’s favorite letter) and the exaggerated A of Rawi are bor-
rowings from the captions to Pro dva kvadrata.

Varvara Stepanova: four examples of graphic poetry, 1918-19. Watercolor and ink.
Collection of Varvara Rodchenko, Moscow.

Such resolutions anticipated Lissitzky’s most impressive book design, i.e.
Vladimir Mayakovsky's Dlia golosa (For the Voice, Berlin, 1923). As an aural-visual
construction, this book of poetry is a unique assemblage built on definite, “scien-
tific” principles. For Lissitzky, the visual element here was not meant simply to
illustrate-to accompany or even describe the text-but to serve as a directory
to the poems. Furthermore, Lissitzky, paying homage to the ethos of efficiency
and speed, introduced the thumb index as a quick reference tool just as in an
office ledger or catalog. Finally, Lissitzky wished to correlate the emotional
charge of the poems with that of the images: just as he modulated the interior
space of his exhibition rooms from Dresden and Hanover in 1 926 and 1 927-28
by applying reliefs to the walls and just as he then led the visitor through this
space by the “geographical” layout of the reliefs, so he incorporated the visual
signs in the Mayakovsky book as guides to the reader’s psychological response
Dlia golosa was Lissitzky’s most extraordinary attainment in book design,
although he continued to experiment in this field. For example, he made exten-
sive use of photomontage in several catalogs and pamphlets of ca. 1930, and,
like Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy, he hoped that the next stage would be “photo-
writing.” Together with Gustav Klutsis, Rodchenko, Sergei Senkin, Stepanova, and
Solomon Telingater, Lissitzky tried to use photography as a dynamic, creative
discipline as a member of the group October in 1928-32-one of the last
manifestations of experimental design in the Soviet Union. Even in the 1 930s, in
spite of weak health and increasing political pressures, Lissitzky continued to
apply photomontage in new and refreshing ways, and with Rodchenko,
Stepanova, Nikolai Suetin and others, he made a vital contribution to the issues
of the propaganda magazine USSR in Construction (Moscow, 1 932-38). In many
cases, the subtle integration of image and word, the sophisticated treatment
of the documentary photograph, and the often unexpected resolutions of com-
position remind us of Lissitzky’s audacious book designs of the earlier period.

The “visualization" of the Russian book in the 1 91 Os and 1 920s produced
many exciting results, only a few of which can be mentioned here. A longer
assessment would take into account Kamensky’s so-called "ferro-concrete”
poems of 1914-16 with their mixed typographies and universal accessibility,
Stepanova’s graphic poetry of 191 9-20, 34 and Telingater’s “voicegrams” for
Semen Kirsanov’s poetry of the mid-1920s. 35 But one conclusion that should be
made is that the Constructivist achievements of the 1 920s, especially in book
design, were essentially the culmination of the pre-Revolutionary experiments
and did not necessarily derive from the socio-political commitments of the
Revolution. For example, Rodchenko’s famous cycle of photo-collages for
Mayakovsky’s Pro eto (About It, M. 1923) can be viewed as extensions of
Malevich's photo-collages in his transrational paintings (e.g. Woman at an
Advertisement Kiosk, 1914, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam). True, in the
post-Revolutionary avant-garde book, the medium may no longer be the on-

El Lissitzky (?): cover lor the magazine USSR in Constrvttion, Moscow, 1937, No. 3.

ly message, but the basic formal components remained similar to those
espoused by the Burliuks, Goncharova, Larionov, etc.: asymmetry, shift, in-
terpenetration of word and image, cheap paper (dictated by economic rather
than by esthetic concerns just after 191 7), desecration of “high" subjects, use of
shock tactics. 36 The Constructivists smoothed and refined the rough gestures of
the Cubo-Futurists, but they did not necessarily improve upon them.

Alexander Rodchenkos photomontage for Pro eto [About It] by Vladimir Mayakov-
•ky, Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatelstvo, 1923, between pp. 30 and 31.

Kazimir Malevich: Woman at an Advertisement Kiosk, 1914. Oil. Stedelijk Museum,
Amsterdam.

One direct consequence of Russia's political transformation was a rapid,
increased reliance on the decree, the declaration, the tract, the debate, the
polemic, i.e. a restoration of the word in its accessible, meaningful context.
Fterhaps of all the Soviet arts in the late 1920s and 1930s rhetoric was the most
advanced, the most manifest, and the most creative, and the evolution of the

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book in Stalin’s Russia reflects this renewed power of the word as social commu-
nication. As in the 19th century, the image, once again, became a mere
accompaniment to the text, an illustration of the fantastic messages delivered
by an enormous propaganda machine. Book illustration thrived-and many

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[A Tango with Cows], by Vasilii Kamensky, Moscow: Pervyi xhurnal russkikh
futuristov, 1914.

4 Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova: frontispiece for the album Krasnaia
armiia [The Red Army] edited by V.G. Sokolov, Moscow: Ogiz-lxogix, 1938.

unorthodox artists worked as designers and illustrators at that time-but it was,
precisely, illustration, a handmaiden to the story, demoted once again to an
auxiliary position. 37 Moreover, the Soviet book itself, commissioned, printed
and published exclusively by the state, could no longer accommodate in-
dividual deviance and eccentric interpretation. But perhaps there is another,
more universal reason for the rapid decline of book design after ca. 1 930-and
not just in the Soviet Union. By then other communication systems presented
themselves to the human imagination-the radio, the long-distance telephone,
and the talkies. The fact that the Cubo-Futurists had given such careful atten-
tion to the book, that they had used it consciously as a primary means of com-
munication indicates that, for all their "vulgarity,” they respected the book as a
special, inimitable artifact. 38

THREE WAVES OF
EMIGRATION

Szymon Bojko

INTRODUCTION

The third wave of emigre Russian intellectuals, writers, poets, artists and scholars
to reach Western Europe and other continents peaked in the late 1970s. Like
the two preceding waves, before and after the October 1917 revolution, it did
not take the form of a spontaneous mass escape. It was rather a cumulative
sum of individual destinies and decisions which the artists took often in
dramatic circumstances after an inner struggle, in an atmosphere of forced un-
wanted partings, with an underlying desire to lead a normal life and enjoy
creative freedom.

At the present time the whole phenomenon, in terms of its scale and
geographic range, particularly in the sphere of fine arts, is unique. The actuality
of abandoning the social system and artistic reality in which the emigre com-
munity had been shaped and in which it had functioned is different-as different
as the process of its adaptation to thoroughly different systems of public life and
values. The fact that mostly young artists each with their specific background
and standpoint moved into the orbit of western culture and post-industrial
civilization has no precedent. Their example is extremely striking, since they had
been outside world trends and experiments in a living art, isolated for years, with
no access to new concepts, new media or new works by leading western artists.

They are not, though, the only contemporary nomads who wander
about the world, across frontiers, with their vision of art. Migrating, changing
residence, moving in and out, is now for artists a normal way of life. But the lack
of freedom, social upheavals, ideological crises, disillusionments, doubts are
what make this present wave of immigration special and not normal.

THE FIRST WAVE ... In the beginning there was Munich

At the turn of the century and precisely during its first decade, for the first time
in history, Russian art entered into dialogue with Europe, thus breaking the bonds
of academicism and conservative ideologies that supported the myth of an
everlasting, ever unchanging holy Russia. New trends from Germany and
France swept into Moscow and St. Petersburg fertilizing a ready soil. It is just then,
on the spur of modernism, that contacts and joint undertakings were initiated
by native Russian artists with the European avant-garde.

Munich was the first place they visited in search of an esthetic ideal that
might meet world standards. In that city, where a colony of Polish painters had
already settled, a Russian community moved in next. The Russians’ moving spirit
was Igor Grabar, a widely educated painter and teacher. He was aware of the
fact that it would not be possible to overcome the provincialism of Russian art
without fully grasping the latest achievements in world painting. Already highly
respected when in Russia, Grabar succeeded in stimulating his young friends
with his cry: "abroad, abroad!"

Dmitry Kardovsky Alexei Yavlensky, Vladimir Izdebsky, Marianna Verefkin,
Kogan, and Bekhteiev arrived in Munich together with him. Vasilii Kandinsky en-
joyed a special position among them. His connection with the town of Munich
played a significant role in the avant-garde movement of both the countries,
dating back to his first visit in 1 897. Friendly contacts flourished after the New
Artists Association and the Blaue Reiter group (1911) were formed. The Russians
quickly became part of the bohemian international whose esthetic radicalism,
lifestyle and vocal opinions on middle-class values threatened the conserva-
tively oriented public.

The first modernist exhibition held in 1909 was received unfavorably by
the Munich press which demanded that the “anarchistic exhibition,” as they
called it, should be closed down because they maintained it was organized
by a foreign, chiefly Russian, element which could lead to dangerous conse-
quences for the old culture of Bavaria.

The Russian artists’ inspiring impact was noted by the painter Franz Marc
in th e Almanach Der Blaue Reiter-. “The first serious representatives of the new
ideas in Munich, and the only ones, were two Russians (Kandinsky and Yavlen-
sky) who have been living here for several years and whose activity went un-
noticed till the Germans joined them.”

Valentine Marcade in Le Renouveau de i’art picturat Russe also details
how the Russians were making their way through Munich’s Parnassus. He quotes
Ludvik Cub, a Czechoslovakian modernist painter, who commented on the at-
mosphere of the private painting school run by Anton Azbe, which foreigners
attended: “In Azbe’s school the Russians represented the most dynamic ele-

Alexei Yavlensky, Sthokko Mlt Tellerhut, 1910, oil on board, 19W x M'/a", photo
by Otto E. Nelson. Courtesy Leonard Hutton Galleries, Now York.

merit, no matter whether they were many or few. Soon they dominated
everything and, in consequence, Azbe himself. And there was nothing strange
in that. They were mature people with strong wills, and unquestionably they

were gifted. Among them there were graduates from the Academy of Fine Arts,
lawyers, doctors, philosophers and army officers.”

The Munich chapter, so important for Russian art, could be continued
thanks to Kandinsky's many-sided activity, his collaboration with art associa-
tions and magazines which propagated modernist art, as well as the numerous
journeys, correspondence and theoretical essays on art events in Germany,
which Kandinsky started sending as regular correspondence to such
magazines in St. Petersburg as Mir Iskusstva (The World of Art) and Apollon.

In this way he built a bridge between East and West. There he developed
his thesis on a spiritual element in art, which he presented at the All-Russian
Convention in St. Petersburg in 191 1. Intellectually, his perfect command of the
German language helped the artist to master the new problems of form and
ideas which required precise thinking and expression. Will Grohmann, author
of the first monograph on Kandinsky, said that “Kandinsky was a Russian who
wrote in German.” Not many similar examples can be given; what matters is cer-
tainly not his bilinguality, but his ability to experience, simultaneously and pro-
foundly, the eastern Greek-Byzantine and the western Latin civilizations. The Rus-
sians, who were in the very epicenter of changes in the sturm and drang period,
preserved the authenticity of their native culture; they “discussed archaism and
synthesis when speaking of old frescoes in Russian Orthodox Churches, icons
and Scythian statues.”

Paris for the First Time

Berlin was not yet on the route of migrations and journeys. This artistic Mecca
would be reached by Russians at another time when they became refugees.
Till the beginning of the century they were enthralled by Paris, the capital of
France. Prince Sergei Scherbatov, a painter and aristocrat, writes about it in the
memoirs of his European journeys: “We were young, children of our age. We
believed in contemporary times which fascinated us ; we trusted the deluding
chant of a siren charming us away to Paris. Since the breeze from France swept
Germany and caused a change in artistic orientations, isn’t original better than
its imperfect imitation? Shouldn't we prefer the authentic Paris rather than Paris
as seen through Munich’s glasses?"

While Kandinsky and his circle from the Munich’s Der Blaue Reiter
became involved in the German and Russian avant-garde, Diaghilev and his
Ballets Russes offered Europe the Russian genius of dance, music and art. From
that time on Russia, in the eyes of the civilized West, was no longer a synonym
for a restricted society, the barbaric East with its provincial anecdotal art. Most
of the authors writing on Diaghilev focused upon his enterprising activities, while
his compagnie d exportation of the Russian ballet became a unique success

in the history of twentieth-century art.

And that was a fact: dictatorial, charismatic Diaghilev was able to win
the greatest talents of Russia for his plans. Another feature, probably decisive
for his success, should be mentioned. A charcteristic trait of Diaghilev’s per-
sonality was his "Europeanness” and not parochial “Russianness” which guards
itself from change. Diaghilev had a rare feeling for the spirit of his time and an
artistic instinct. Being open to the West while simultaneously exposing Europe
to the wealth of the spiritual culture of Russia and the East to which it belongs
geographically and culturally— this is what determined Diaghilev’s activity. That
is why the Ballets Russes survived the shock of World War I and the Russian
Revolution.

The first exhibition of Russian art in Paris in 1906 preceded the Ballets
Russes and served as Diaghilev’s calling card, as Arsene Alexandre, a Parisian
critic, recalled. His impressions of the opening day of the exhibition were: “Are
we so incredibly ignorant? An average Frenchman at that time rather dis-
dained geography, but not many of us wanted to know anything at all, even
on the eve of a long journey to St. Petersburg or Moscow. Many are not allowed
to admit that their knowledge of geography is not sufficient.”

We know from numerous sources about the premiere of the first ballet
performance in the Chatelet Theater in Paris in 1909. All agree that the audi-
ence was absolutely startled, lady Anna de Noailles, a poet, wrote: “I saw things
that had never existed before. Everything was dazzling, intoxicating, cap-
tivating and arresting, and appeared as if it had been swept onto the stage
where it blossomed spontaneously as perfect as the green world which gets
its magnificence from the climate in which it is nurtured.”

Jules Bertrant, a French historian, provides an external, purely
emotional impression: “Few people then suspected the extent and the force
of the revolution which had been provoked by Diaghilev. It is only today that
we can measure its dynamism. Fundamentally, it was the thousand-colored
Orient bursting once more into our grey and monotonous life and flooding it.
The Ballets Russes is a note in the history of French esthetics."

The Ballets Russes offered the choosy Parisian public not only music and
dance, but also the achievements of a group of painters who designed the sets
and costumes. Artists unknown till then, Roerich, Bakst, Golovin, Benois and
Anisfeld suddenly became fashionable. They were talked about, written about,
celebrated and imitated. Primarily it was Bakst who captured a whole genera-
tion's imagination, from cognoscenti to wide audiences on both sides of the
Atlantic. Katherine Gibson, an American journalist, noted that in American
stores “there were velvets, satins, calicoes everywhere with printed patterns
designed by Bakst.”

After the spectacle of Scheherazade, the oriental style of dressing,
especially with a headdress, became a prevailing fashion in Paris. Turbans

ousted hats. Oriental patterns and color combinations after Bakst were “in”
canary, deep blue, cyclamen, burgundy, red and jasper. Bakst's impact upon
everyday life was growing fast and wide from shoes to furniture and elements
of interior decoration. New words-such as Bakstianlike-were coined to denote
the line of the cut and the kind of pattern. Natty women wished to look like Per-
sian odalisques, and they absolutely had to have their boudoirs turned into
harems.

It became a custom in haute couture circles to organize Soirees Orien-
tates or oriental balls, where formal gowns designed after Bakst's costumes were
presented. At one of the balls given by Poiret and called the “Thousand and
Second Nights," the “guests were required to wear Persian costumes. Half-naked
black men carried torches and other oriental attractions.”

The germ of this orientalism, sensuous, loaded with eroticism, was Bakst’s
designs for Scheherazade, Le Carnaval, Cleopatra, The Afternoon of the Faun

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and Cleo. Here Bakst let his virtually uncontrolled imagination go fully. The ori-
ental perverse atmosphere was accentuated by the costumes made of soft
filigree material that provokingly exposed naked dancers, male and female,
as well as downy carpets and accessories. This tale of a thousand and one
nights promised times of erotic freedom, when the senses and physical beauty
are allowed to speak for themselves. Bakst, who left Russia together with
Diaghilev, never returned home, yet he never in fact departed spiritually. He
settled down in Paris and did not take advantage of an opportunity to move
to the United States, although he visited it in 1923 to make a project for a stage
design based upon Russian folk motifs.

While Bakst’s lasting contribution to the advancement of artistic thought
was his extension of the formula of “Russianness” and his conception of orien-
talism, Roerich’s merit was his introduction to the West of the exoticism of Rus-
sian mythology. He immersed all his eyes and ears in Russia’s fairy-like pre-
history. Roerich tried to create a painterly portrait of the Varangian and
Scythian country, with its unbounded spaces and nature yet untouched by the
human hand, pagan rituals, secrets hidden in the earth and knights’ heroic
deeds. In the Scenes et Danses Polovtsiennes from Borodin’s opera and in Le
Prince Igor, Roerich revived the epos of old Russia, wild, barbarian and pagan,
exciting his contemporaries with its savage and unruly character.

A still more overwhelming presence of archaic matter was felt when
Stravinsky’s ballet Le Sacre du Printemps, subtitled “Scenes from Pagan Russia,”
premiered. The orgiastic music, ritual dances, primitive rites performed on stage
in Roerich’s decor and costumes, were received controversially by artistic Paris:
some people were spellbound, others outraged. According to contemporary
statements, the ballet was derived from ancient sources of the Russian spirit.
Roerich, though, in his later creations was not able to maintain the role he had
envisaged for himself-as bard of prehistoric Slavic culture. However, in the
United States he was considered an inspired painter. In 1923 the Nicholas
Roerich Museum was founded in New York, where it still exists.

THE SECOND WAVE

The establishment of the Communist social system in Russia and its ideology
that regulated all aspects of life including culture and art caused divisions and
differences of opinion primarily among the intelligentsia and the artistic com-
munity. Some artists supported the revolution enthusiastically and with no
objections. For others it was not acceptable. A conflict arose because it was
impossible for the artist to claim independence while obeying ideological im-
peratives, even within the context of the revolutionary state's relatively liberal

policies. A decision to emigrate with no thought of return was ripening among
many, and they did so as soon as an opportunity sprang up. For that reason
their option was exile with all its consequences. Russian culture, which till then
had been evolving in historical and spiritual unity, split along two lines: national
and emigre.

The authorities tried to eliminate and depreciate the latter. Still the artist
diaspora, although for Russia the loss was severe, rather built up Russia’s cultural
prestige abroad. The emigrants left their homeland at a time when for over a
decade Russia enjoyed a strong position on the new art map of the world and
had become a center, inferior in no respect to other cultural centers, neither
from the point of view of the dynamism of its artistic life, the pluralism of its
informal experiments and artistic milieu, nor of its theoretical thought.

Russkii Berlin

In Europe, the routes of emigrations led mainly to two places- Berlin and
Paris, either directly or via Warsaw, Kovno, Tallin, Prague and Constantinople.
Berlin, especially literary Berlin, was an ideal haven for emigrants for two
reasons: there was a unique combination of art, literature and politics there,
and it was on the lines of communication, across the Weimar Republic with
Russia.

Russkii Berlin 1921-23 is a title of a collection of documents recently
published in Paris. It consists mostly of correspondence concerning the Russian
emigres’ intellectual life. The publication gives a clear picture of the complex
material and psychological situations of writers, artists, ex-politicians and schol-
ars forced to make a new start. The climate of Berlin in times of raging inflation,
which promoted a desire to make the most of life and live in luxury, while pov-
erty redoubled class antagonisms, and expressionism prevailed in art and
promiscuity in social life, was recalled by Ilya Ehrenburg:

I do not know how many Russians lived in Berlin at that time, I guess quite
a large population, as everywhere one could hear the Russian language
Numerous Russian restaurants opened with balalaikas, Gypsies blinis
shashlics, and, of course, singing, which is impossible to do without, while
it tears the soul apart. There was an artistic cabaret, three newspapers,
five weeklies. Within one year 1 7 Russian publishing offices became ac-
tive; Fonvizin’s and Pilniak’s books, cookery books, works by fathers of the
Russian Orthodox Church, technical information books, memoirs and
lampoons appeared in print In Berlin there was a place resembling
Noah’s Ark where the clean and the unclean gathered, which was called
A House of Art. In an ordinary German cafeteria Russian writers met every
Friday. Alexei Tolstoi, Remizov, Lidin, Pilniak, Sokolov-Mikitov read their
stories aloud. Mayakovsky performed his texts. Yesenin, Marina

Tsvetayeva, Andrei Bely, Pasternak, Khodasevich read poetry. Once I
caught sight of Igor Severyanin who arrived from Estonia; he admired
himself as usual and read the same poezy. A speech by Pougny, a painter,
caused a real storm; Arkhipenko, Altman, Shklovsky, Mayakovsky,
Shterenberg, Gabo, Lissitzky and myself argued fiercely with one another.

Ehrenburg exactly pointed out the unusual relationship between the
“clean” and the "unclean," i.e. between the Russian emigrants and the Soviet
citizens staying in Berlin as delegates or on cultural missions. Both sides avoided
social ostracism, since their conviction that they belonged to one tradition and
language was still stronger than ideological divisions. The unique common in-
terest of those “from over there” and those "behind the cordons” sometimes
took the form of osmosis, which never occurred again in later times. Very few
critics have noticed a detail concerning the printing of Mayakovsky for
Reading Out Loud-a well-known book with Lissitzky's typographic design. Its of-
ficial publisher was Gosizdat RSFSR, Berlin 1923. However, on the title page of
the book there is the additional information that it was printed by Lutze & Vogt
GMBH. Another example: the masterpiece of Lissitzky’s modern typography-
A Suprematist Story About Two Squares-was published by Scythen Verlag in
Berlin, a private publisher with a Slavophile orientation, which also financed the
multi-language magazine Veshch-Objet-Object edited by Ehrenburg and
Lissitzky. One must not underestimate the fact that post-war Germany was the
first capitalistic country to recognize the Soviet Union and establish mutual
diplomatic and trade relations.

The fluctuation of prices and the German mark was favorable and quite
important for the publishing business and export-import initiatives, including
traffic in products of culture. In the beginning, goods and services were
cheaper in comparison with other countries of western Europe. It was simply
profitable to publish in Berlin. Soon however the crisis, rising cost of living,
unemployment, the atmosphere of panic totally transformed the landscape
of Russkii Berlin.

The chief and perhaps most popular personality of the publishing boom
and generally in Russian literary life in Berlin in 1921-23 was Vaschenko, the pub-
lisher of the magazine Russkaya Kniga and co-founder of the House of Art, lo-
cated over the Cafe Leon. Collaborating with various opposing camps and on
both sidces of the ideological barricade, Yaschenko provided his readers with
continued information on Russian literary output. Once again let us quote
Ehrenburg, the eyewitness and participant in this strange hybridization:

There was another patch of 'no-man's land’ in Berlin where Soviet writers
met writers in exile; it was the magazine Novaya Russkaya Kniga, edited
by Prof. Alexander Yaschenko, a lawyer and lover of literature who left
Russia with a Soviet passport and, like Minsky, tried to unite everybody.
Who would not collaborate with his magazine?!

In a book published in Berlin, A vsie taki ona vertitsya (Helikon, 1922),
Ehrenburg recalls suggesting the publication of a monograph devoted to new
Russian art with his introduction. He intended to cover achievements in art,
sculpture and theater and include Tatlin, Yakulov, Exter, Udaltzova, Malevich,

El Lissitzky, "Figurinenmappe" for the portfolio The Vittory Over The Sun,
Hannover, 1923.

Popova, Mashkov, Konchalovsky and others, as well as theater sets and
costumes designed for the Kamernyi Theater.

An exhibition organized by the IZO (Fine Art) Department of the People’s
Commissariat for Education and called / Russische Kunst Ausstellung was held
at the Van Diemen Gallery on the Unterden Linden in Berlin in 1922. It was the
first art exhibition staged abroad after the break caused by the war and revolu-
tion. As was customary then, works by futurists, suprematists and constructivists
were shown as well as traditionalists, Cezannists and cubists. The catalogue's
graphic layout was given as a commission to Lissitzky who was also the curator
of the exhibition. I. Puni, a critic who had arrived from Petrograd, delivered a
lecture on contemporary Russian art in the House of Art. The fact that such exile
artists as Ivan Pougny could take part in the exhibition which anyway was a call-
ing card of the new regime was not yet inconceivable. The time was in fact ex-
ceptional. The discussion that followed Puni's lecture in the Russian Club at the
House of Art involved both sides: artists in exile and artists from the Soviet Union:
Arkhipenko, Altman, Shklovsky Mayakovsky, Shterenberg, Lissitzky, Gabo and
Ehrenburg.

Among the artists who stayed in Berlin in the Twenties while enjoying an
emigrant’s uncertain status, Alexei Remizov deserves a special note, an author
and fable writer who with the greatest perseverance and in the least favorable
financial situation, practiced the art of calligraphy. This original artist, living his
own inner life, was heavily influenced by ancient Russian folklore and mythol-
ogy. Like William Blake, he designed visual books which were experimental rec-
ords of his dream visions. His works did not stimulate interest in the critics. In Paris
where he moved with his wife, he wrote with bitterness: “The Russians do not
notice my books, so I had to be imposing . . . it is good that the French have
accepted me. What I hear from the Russians is only that I am second-rate.” The
fact is Picasso and Andre Breton did appreciate those handwritten and illus-
trated books of his.

Russkaya Prague

Prague, an old city on the Moldau River, then the capital of one of the most pro-
sperous and democratic European countries, attracted refugees. There,
scholars expected to find new career opportunities and artists new contacts
with the avant-garde. The Czechoslovakian government founded some-
thing like a Russian University which survived till the mid-1930s. Institutes of learn-
ing with Russian orientation were active at that time. Roman Jacobson, foun-
der of the Prague Linguistic Circle which influenced all European philology,
worked in Prague. He did not give up his studies, formerly pursued in Russia, of
avant-garde Russian poetry and he kept in touch with writers in Russia.

Another outstanding personality among the Russian immigrants in
Prague was Pavel Struve, a historian, editor of the magazine Russkaya Mysl,
published there since 1922 and before that in Sophia. As its program Struve
stated: "Culture as a whole, international and Russian, considered from the
complex and deep Russian point of view, which has now become available
and obliging to us, this will be the chief interest of Russkaya Mysl'.’ The subject
of artists emigration to Prague in the Twenties had not yet been covered by any
publication. One can only speculate about the number and frequency of
mutual contacts. From Remizov’s correspondence one fact is known, for in-
stance: that there was a Russian Museum in Prague, whose director was Za-
retzky, a painter.

Paris for the Second Time

The life the artists and the white Russian emigre colony led in Paris was different
from that in post-war Berlin. Apparently more stabilized due to the prosperity
of les annees folles, in fact it was much more difficult, since it was harder to
defend one's identity and be spiritually independent. Although the major-
ity of newcomers at home and abroad displayed notable achievements, and
good social standing, they were quite soon confronted with the Ecole de Paris'
predominant esthetic which subdued all individuality, turning all into its integral
and inseparable parts.

The mood prevalent among the intelligentsia is perhaps best conveyed
in a letter from the poet Zinaida Gippius to Berdiaev, written after her short and
unsuccessful visit ot Warsaw: “I can see clearly now that I am not wanted any-
where, and I can nowhere use my remaining energy. Nothing can be done with
nobody. A strange state, not typical of my very nature . . ."In another letter,
also written in 1923, she says: “And now I am in Paris. For a Russian it is a desert;
there is nothing here, no possibility of creating anything. Emigrants, uncivilized
individuals or old reserved coteries live here.”

Gippius' grievous confessions sound like the credible testimony provided
in prose paragraphs and visual miniatures by Teffi, a writer. In a way her chroni-
cle of Russian emigres in Paris is gay and serious by turns, after the manner of
Schedrin's prose: a Parisian version of Zoschenko's humor. “Laughter mixed with
tears” is how it was termed by Valentine Marcade, Teffi’s friend. Witty sayings
from her mini-stories, which she published in the emigre newspapers Peslodniye
Novosti and Vozrozhdenie, were instantly absorbed into the colloquial
language. She won incredible popularity with herfeuilletonKefer? (in French:
Que faire, in English: What to do?) based upon an untranslatable pun reveal-
ing the whole bitterness of the emigrant’s fate.

Material troubles, banal yet real and distressing, sometimes sheer pov-

erty and frustration resulting from her inability to become adjusted to a differ-
ent situation, to accept other than Russia’s "rules of the game," with no more
excitement derived from her contacts with the public and the press, as well as
loneliness and adverse relations with the social milieu-all that was experienced
by Marina Tsvetayeva and ultimately led, the fact is well known, to her tragic
death.

Less drastic, though also permeated by sadness, was the final Parisian
chapter of Olga Glebova-Soudeikina's life, a leading artist in Petrograd’s literary
cabarets. She was colorful as a butterfly, an actress and the poet’s muse. Dur-
ing the era of the New Economic Policy she found herself on a Parisian street
with a suitcase full of porcelain figurines and dolls which she designed after she
left the stage. For her a difficult and unilluminated life began. Eliane Moch-
Bickert, author of an unpublished monograph devoted to the actress, writes:
"The first months of her stay in Paris were very hard for her. She felt lonesome,
rejected, separated from her homeland and her dear ones from whom she had
departed. Her only source of income was the occasional selling of figures, tex-
tile dolls and pictures with applications she made herself.” Later on, she made
her living by translating and was occupied with embroidery. At the beginning
after her arrival, she continued socializing in artistic circles and gave parties
in her apartment like Petrograd’s literary salons.

In her later days, however, she became reserved and solitary. Called the
lady of the Birds, she kept about a hundred colorful birds, that she looked after
and never parted from. And yet, Olga wrote her chapter in the history of Rus-
sian culture in the first decades of the century. She remained forever in Anna
Akhmatova’s poetry as her dvoinik, her second self, and she addressed nu-
merous epigraphs to her. In “A Poem Without a Hero,” Olga appears as a bright
vision of the glorious world which passed away and only lives on in memories.

Other examples of the struggle for survival and to create art can be
listed almost endlessly, along with the names of those artists who left Russia,
Ukraine and Georgia as emigrants or escaped because of the war but who
decided to stay in Paris. (See Appendix at end of chapter.)

The artists who had settled down there earlier and won substantial
recognition in reputable French art circles sometimes failed to avoid misfor-
tune. Mikhail larionov and his wife Natalia Goncharova, although at the peak
of their popularity, also suffered destitution. Nevertheless, they did not consider
the option of returning home. However, Konnienkov, Serebriakova and
Schukhaev went back to Russia at various times. It is quite probable that Luna-
charsky and the group of artists associated with him such as David Shteren-
berg, then director of the IZO Department, expected hopefully a change in of-
ficial attitudes. Some light is shed on this matter within the context of the offi-
cial exhibition of French art staged with great care in Moscow in 1928. The art-
ists selected to exhibit their works were rather unusual; however, the overwhelm-

ing majority were Russian artists who officially represented the Ecole de Paris

This was emphasized in the text of the catalogue published in Moscow^
whose author was Abram Efros, an influential art critic. Entitled The Russian
Group, it makes a bizarre impression. Full of veiled pretensions and sarcastic
remarks addressed to artists who left their country and landed, as the author
says, on the outskirts of the art world in Paris where their talents were being
squandered, Efros wrote: “During the last decade a phenomenon has arisen
which I would call a cultural expatriation. Our compatriots do not leave now
for Paris to live and study there according to our long tradition. Rather, they
obstinately and even obsessively enter a reality which is thoroughly French.
They are not Russian artists in Paris; they are French artists of Russian origin.”

A lengthy argument follows in which warm compliments paid to Larionov,
Goncharova and Chagall mingle with complaints addressed to such artists as
Barthe, Pougny, Mane-Katz, Hosyasson, Rybak, Zak, Boberman and Annenkov,
trapped in the iron corset of the Parisian art world. Although they made huge
efforts to express themselves in the language of French forms, the author
concludes:

The Russian Group associated with the Ecole de Paris is d tribute paid to
history. It testifies that in the climate of artistic tension and strict re-
quirements of the day, Russian artists have been able to elevate Western
art to its highest peaks. And how many times, quite recently, have we
been accused, at the same time of depression, of the inborn provin-
cialism of Russian painting and sculpture? What nonsense! How much
more important is knowing that from now on it is we who are transform-
ing the history of Russia, and transforming it radically. It is entirely up to us
whether we will stop counting losses and moaning over them or not. Peo-
ple are not rabbits; they cannot be placed into cages and transported
back.

Lunacharsky’s text also appeared in that catalogue, in which he ex-
presses a slight pity that such good artists as Annenkov, Exter, Larionov, Gon-
charova or Yakovlev are living abroad: “Would it not be interesting to watch
the evolution of works by Larionov and Goncharova who have been staying
in France for perhaps too long?"

Efros’ opinions, evaluations and predictions deny reality. Paris did not
sterilize and provoke artistic repression but on the contrary, it enriched it. It is
true that the Ecole de Paris suppressed some of the artists’ identity and totally
absorbed them, which also happened to Poles, Czechs, Italians and Spaniards.
The levelling, though, was somehow an automatic process which continued
not in connection with individual artists but within the whole system of art.

The critics’ fears were groundless, that those uprooted people would be-
come disconnected from their native sources and, sooner or later, from their
specific vision of the world. In fact their Russianness denoted the presence of
mystical, religious and metaphysical elements in artistic thought and creation,

Alexandra Exter, Architectonic Landscape I Design for a Decor), 1924, oil on canvas,
MV' x 28%", photo by Otto E. Nelson. Courtesy Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York.

as Rilke experienced during his journey to Russia before 1900: “I feel as if I were
watching an act of creation, with a few words a new Being is brought into ex-
istence, things as great as God the Creator does.” This Russian eschatology was
not annihilated by the rationalism and materialistic philosophy of Western life.

While the transcendental reality of Goncharova’s creations, Larionov's
and Grigoryiev’s peasant ethos, Chagall’s sacral symbolism came directly as
intended out of the iconic, in other artists’ consciousness the religious reflec-
tion was coded somehow, in spite of the esthetic ideal they represented. De
Stael and Lanskoy who pursued abstractions are the best examples of this.

The philosophy and theology of the Russian Orthodox Church, with
Vladimir Solovev, called the Russian Plato, and Pavel Florensky as leading intel-
lectuals, had a great impact upon Russian cultural identity. The Communist

Revolution and the subsequent emigration did not weaken this influence. His-
torical and theological thought made further advances. In France, due to
Sergei Bulgakov and Nikolai Berdiaev, it evolved to new heights. Berdiavev's in-
tellectual penetration ranged from studies on Russian messianism to reflections
on problems which several generations of Russian intelligentsia had tackled:
Russia and Europe, Eastern and Western cultures.

Following Dostoevsky, Berdiaev perceived the quality of the Russian spirit:
two souls; one European and the other oriented toward the East. Writing about
the duality of Russia's destiny, and the supposition that the Russian nation is truly
convinced of its mission to on the one hand, save and create the New
Jerusalem, on the other hand according to him it “may yield to temptation and,
having lost faith, accept in error the kingdom of Antichrist as the kingdom of
Christ.”

Profound, unquestionable and unique, most fruitful and inspiring for ar-
tistic creation was the spirit of communion with Russian popular tradition, in the
sense of values and not ornamental patterns. As a subject of study investigated
by such French art historians as Valentine Marcade and Jean-Claude Mar-
cade, these problems merge into a broader intellectual reflection upon what
is universal and what is specific and national in contemporary art.

Presenting Lanskoy’s creations, one of the outstanding representatives
of Ecole de Paris, J. C Marcade emphasizes just these existential links with
Russia’s spiritual realm, from which the artist descends. In an essay entitled
Lanskoy s Mystical Light we read: “He is surely the only one among the pleiad
of Russian masters who has remade the inner world into the dimension of the
universe, the only one who has discarded restricting this world to narrow frames.
He has done that in order to set energetic powers free in all their complexity
inherent in man’s inner self." In the same publication in an essay entitled “The
Bottomless Deepness of N. de Stael’s Painting," V Marcade gives the most accu-
rate characterization of de Stael the painter whose life and creations are a
measure for many young painters in Russia and elsewhere: "There are geniuses
who conclude the cycle of investigations pursued by their precedents; Vermeer
was one of them, and Mozart, and in Russia Pushkin. De Stael was also one.”

So much has been written about Larionov and Goncharova in Paris,
about their assimilation into French civilization, that everything I say here will
be mere repetition. However, some details noted by their contemporaries
should be stressed, which attest how much the artists loved Paris, the capital
of France, and to what extent it overlapped with their Russkii Paris where they
had brought their old traditions and lifestyle. Waldemar George, author of the
first monograph on Larionov, quotes Apollinaire’s anecdote about his acquain-
tance with the Russian painter from 1916: “His knowledge of French was limited
to two short phrases: c’est bon et c’est mauvais. He pronounced them, however,
with such nuances of meaning and so much to the point that they helped him

not only in arranging affairs but also expressing reasonable judgement, some-
times quite unexpectedly.”

George recalls some of Larionov’s friendships with Fokine Nijinsky, his sister
Bronislava, Massin, Lifar, Balanchine, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Picasso. Larionov
corresponded with his companions in artistic circles in Russia. "He helped them
as much as he could . . . a witty tale-teller, he sparkled with ideas and new
theories speaking in an offhanded manner, and he did not bother about what
use his interlocutor might make of them.” The French critic places the painter
on both sides of the geographic and cultural area: “He is both European and
Russian. Although his guide through the sphere of consciousness is Cezanne,
his reference points are the ancient mother sources of Slavic mythology and
the cult of the earth.”

Other details are recalled by Annenkov, a friend of both artists and
author of memoirs devoted to his compatriots. “In their apartment on Jacques
Callot Street, there was an incredible though poetic mess . . . moving around
in there was difficult, as on tables and chairs documents concerning art were
piled high up But all that was somehow behind a veil of musing. Larionov,
Larionych, Misha-a tall, slightly rural type even in tuxedo, always full of crazy
ideas, a philosopher with cunning half open eyes, no malice or hostility in them.
Although he had been speaking French for fifty years, he had difficulties in ex-
pressing himself.”

To make Larionov's portrait more vivid let us quote an anonymous per-
son who remembered the artist as a regular at the Cafe Flora, day after day,
year after year, in Goncharova’s company: “Larionov always sat on a front chair
and endlessly drew various things, among which were two hundred
charicatures of Apollinaire. He used to offer them to Apollinaire or somebody
else Larionov always drew something; in the theatre, in the street, on the
back cover of the menu, on the bills, on toilet paper. Apart from pencil he us-
ed rice powder, eyeliners, lipsticks, coffee and ash from cigarettes . .

Another figure, equally colorful and impressive in the Russian-Parisian
landscape was Ilya Zdanevich llyazd, a participant in the Russian and
Georgian futurist movement, who settled down in Paris after 1921. He was a
mechanic, a parquet cleaner, finally a hatter, and he almost always starved.
Lucien Schler recollects meeting the artist in 1922, when Ilya and Vladimir
Pozner walked across Paris from one end to the other in order to have a meal,
probably the only one that day, at his friends’ place. Zdanevich was to a
degree more spectacular perhaps than Larionov, and he joined himself to Paris
and its cosmopolitan elite, but his links with Russkii Paris were vital and
uninterrupted.

He was appointed the secretary of the Union des Artistes Russes, par-
ticipated in organizing the charity Travesti Transmental Ball sponsored by the
Union, designed the advertising poster for it and its programme, and gave lec-

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tures on avant-garde theories in Russian poetry, the influence of French art on
new trends in Russian art, the activity of the Kamernyi Theater in Moscow,
among others. The Russian threads were interwoven in all of llyazd’s undertak-
ings. Refusing to collaborate with the white emigres, boycotted by commer-

cial bookstores belonging to Russians, with no contact with the futurists in Russia,
he designed and published on his own a futuristic book, Ledentu le Phare
(1923), now a unique example of the visual explication of the assumptions of
the transmental language ( zaum ) in futuristic typography.

Russkii New York?

At the beginning of the twentieth century the Russian and Jewish-Russian
people became very numerous in the United States, especially in New York, but
they had no intellectual and artistic backing of their own. The Russian Jews
arrived in the 1970s. A few emigrants from Soviet Russia had managed to set-
tle down there earlier, sometimes after a stay in Paris. The small number of

Michael Larionov, La Ronde Celebre, 1924, pen and Indian ink on paper, 8" x 1014",
photo by Otto E. Nelson. A sheet of caricatures. Clockwise from top left: Ansermet,
Misia Serf, Picasso, Apollinaire, Stravinsky, Lifar, Diaghilev, Massine, Jean
Cocteau. Courtesy Leonard Hutton Oalleries, New York.

emigrants was the result of America’s restrictive visa policy. Alexander Arkhi-
penko, Boris Anisfeld, David Burliuk, Mstislav Dobujinsky, Eugene Dunkel, John
Graham (Jan-lvan Dabrowsky, a russianized Pole), Jacques Lipchitz, Simone
Lissim and Boris Margo are known to have lived there.

Burliuk arrived in New York with his wife and two children in the summer
of 1922 by land via Vladivostok, Japan and Montreal for the glory of the father
of Russian futurists. He was respected by such artists as Arshile Gorky, Graham,
Raphael Soyer and Joseph Stella. Admiration from American artists did not im-
prove, though, Burliuk's and his family’s financial situation. He never had any
regular income to pay the rent, which made them frequently change address.

Nevertheless, in 1930 the magazine Color and Rhyme was published in
English. Burliuk appeared as its editor and Maria Burliuk the publisher. An ex-
traordinary author’s magazine, it consisted solely of information and historical
references about the Russian futurist movement. Its contents and photographs
had one thing in common: Burliuk in person. The credibility of the published
materials was not much his concern, as if accuracy was not compatible with
the character of a futurist. That is why the magazine obviously must be treated
with caution.

He continued publishing this unusual journal for a number of years. The
61st and last issue appeared in 1966/67, the year of the artist’s death. Ingenious
and unfailing in building a monument to himself while alive, Burliuk for the twen-
tieth anniversary of futurism in Russia edited a publication entitled Entelekhim,
not forgetting to have the following words printed on the title page: “Father of
proletarian futurism.” On the back cover of its 57th issue he drew The Burliuk
Family Tree.

THE THIRD WAVE

The exodus to which we are nearly eyewitnesses nowadays will only be
briefly treated here as the process of emigration still continues. For that reason
it is difficult to grasp the whole phenomenon. Even a statistical attempt to
gather accurate data would not be possible. Thus, we may cover the problem
only partially, drawing information from magazines devoted to Russian art in
exile, exhibition catalogues, press cuttings and a few books on the subject. Ad-
ditional sources are conversations I held with several artists during my stay in

4 Back cover of the 57th issue of Color and Rhym with a drawing "The Burliuk Fam-
ily Tree" by David Burliuk.

New York in 1982 and 1984, and in Paris in 1985.

It is not my intention to describe here the events and facts which have
determined their decision to leave Russia. In short, the exile has been a side
effect of non-conformism. The reader who is interested in the history of this
phenomenon in the sphere of the visual arts should consult competent writers,
emigrants themselves, and chroniclers, art historians and art critics, among
them Igor Golomshtok and Alexander Glezer.

The inevitable consequence of the impossible reconciliation of the art-
ist with the State was expatriation. Because of the specific criteria which the
authorities adopted concerning Jewish descent, only some of the artists who
rejected the doctrine of social realism left. Some, though not many, of the
migrant artists managed to make a name abroad. Those people with crys-
tallized outlooks and esthetic inclinations who had identified themselves with
unofficial culture, for that very reason were persecuted and discriminated
against as artists. They mostly belonged to the generation of those forty years
old or younger who are artistically active founders of independent ventures
and who enjoy prestige in their millieu.

The first emigrations took place at the beginning of the 1970s. The
mid-1970s marked a slow but gradually increasing traffic that peaked by the
end of the decade. The geography of emigration by no means resembled the
one many years ago and provides material for reflection. It shows not only how
much the world had changed, but also to what extent the world of art has
become polycentric. In western Europe, Paris takes pride of place as the tradi-
tional destination point for Russian emigrants. The French capital still has its
power to attract. It is surrounded by a legend that it is the world's center of art,
verified by the unique collection of French paintings by Schukin and Morozov
in the permanent exhibition at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow and
the Leningrad Hermitage.

In the second place and with much fewer artist emigrants are Italy, Great
Britain and West Germany. In some particular cases emigrants settle down in
Eastern European countries: Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. More dis-
tant places on the map of the world where artists from Russia arrived perhaps
for the first time were Israel, Australia and Canada. It is a noticeable fact that
emigration to the United States has increased, often via Israel, Paris and other
places in Western Europe. Some artists avoid big urban conglomerations and
prefer less exposed centers. (In Philadelphia, I met a newly arrived young
graphic artist.)

However, the mainstream flows to New York, where according to some
reliable data, about a hundred artists of Russian descent live and pursue ar-
tistic careers. The same number is said to stay in Paris. New York, a city which
promises an artist that his vision will be realized or shattered with equal prob-
ability, glory or oblivion, a city both civilized and barbarous, pragmatic and

practical, does appreciate artists. Thanks to having absorbed several waves
of emigrants, before and after the First World War, after Hitler's rise to power in
Germany, during and after the Second World War, New York has had the historic
opportunity to encounter the European Parnassus of art. A new chance to keep
and strengthen this position is represented, in my deepest belief, by the latest
injection of creative potential provided by these immigrant-Russian-born art-
ists attached to Russian culture.

An injection like this, in the first decade of this century which proved
beneficial for American art, in effect, has consisted of such artists from across
the ocean as de Kooning, Gross, Nadelman, Pascin, Arkhipenko Graham
Neutra, Kiesler, Hofmann and Rothko, not to meniton younger emigrants who
made artistic careers on American soil: Tworkov, Gorky, Roszak, Ben Shahn,
Soyer, Lassav and many others.

For those who remained in Russia they still embody the idea of being
"one of us,” fashioned in the same mold, sharing the same lot as their genera-
tion. The psychological situation of earlier emigrants who left Russia right after
the establishment of the Soviet system was different. To the world they arrived
in they appeared as aliens bearing the stigma of exile. These emigrants were
remote, sometimes absolutely with a language barrier added, from their new
reality. They were far more remote than those of the second wave of emigra-
tion for whom Paris, Berlin, Rome, Vienna or London were not just mere geo-
graphical names. Many used to visit those places, and they all became
perfectly familiar with the trends and facts of French, German art, and so on.
In the 1920s, they had a background in the avant-garde which was shared by
the whole of Europe, and of the common experiment in creating the twentieth-
century language of art.

The background of the third wave was a closed system resulting from
isolation. The space of the world shrank and was minimized. Nevertheless, the
outer world penetrated some cracks, projecting usually a distorted image, as
if dismembered, in separate pieces, rarely in synthesis and from first-hand
sources. The view of cultural pluralism was blurred. Only very strong individuals
were able to reason independently within their own system of truth and man-
aged to defend themselves against the seclusion and provincialism, against
third and fourth-rate importations from abroad. Their physical displacement
caused no shock. They continued to realize their esthetic ideals and remained
faithful to the values to which they had always referred. For others, the West was
a leap from the realm of constraint into a glittering pluralistic abyss. Bewildered,
lost in the multitude of honest ways and appearances, confused about the dif-
ferent criteria of evaluation and motivation for artistic labor, they experienced
frustration and states of indecision.

looking through the available bibliography, I have not come across any
attempt to analyze this process. The adaptation, assimilation and accultura-

tion of Russian artist emigrants, which is in fact rather a subject for a cultural
sociologist than an art critic, is extremely topical. Published interviews with art-
ists contain no element of self-knowledge and thus consign this aspect of their
life to silence. The truth must be drawn and deduced from various secondary,
indirect sources and primarily from private conversations with the artists. The
attitudes I observe may be reduced to several typical patterns:

1. “We are emigres, but we hold ourselves aloof from our new environ-
ment and do not assimilate risking that our status as Russian artists will be per-
manent. For that reason we support all forms of activity whose purpose is the
integration of the entire diaspora, no matter what trends artists follow. We con-
sider our purpose is to found museums, centers, galleries and public collections
of Russian art in exile, to promote exhibitions and shows, publications,
magazines and professional criticism of our own.”

2. “As emigrants we maintain our ethnic identity. At the same time we
enter the western system of art, contributing to it our own problems and the
spiritual world to which we are still attached. We reject all folk, local and exter-
nal elements in our tradition and refer to the Russian avant-garde of the 1 91 Os
and 1920s, during its flourishing period.”

3. “Having left our homeland, we are getting free from all national, ethnic
and denominational burdens. We treat contemporary art as an open system
which is not confined to geographical regions, frontiers that divide countries,
and to cultural structures. In today’s art we see a humanistic alternative, a way
to arrive at the truth independently of national schools and tendencies in art.”

4. “The sooner we are integrated into the external world into the culture
of the country in which we settled down: French, German, American, the bet-
ter chance we have to level the differences and become artists with a universal
outlook. We do not wish to create art in a Russian ghetto, to exhibit only, or
nearly only, with our compatriots, to be presented in magazines addressed to
our Russian circles and a narrow audience."

I must admit that none of these patterns occurs in a pure form. Mixed
models along with extreme ones may exist. All of them subcutaneously deter-
mine the actual situation, sympathies and animosities, relationships and con-
nections among particular groups. Divisions are not usually perceptible to
those outside; thus, one can be easily mistaken.

The western press did not at first distinguish the nuances of outlook and
behavior among the newcomers. For many journalists and art critics the emigre
Russian nonconformists, painters, sculptors, graphic artists, book designers,
authors of performance, proponents of new figuration or abstraction ap-
proaching surrealistic or neo-expressionistic esthetics who sought solutions in
minimal stylistics or critical realism were all primarily the subject of political
dispute.

Philosophical questions, problems concerning their viewpoint or

MUSEUM BOCHUM

KUNSTSAMMLUNG

20 JAHRE Ul
KUNST AUS DER

MABHANGIG
! SOWJETUNIO

BOCHUM 3. FEBRU

AR - 11. MARZ 1979

Poster for the exhibition 20 Year % of Independent Art from the Soviet Union,
Bochum Museum, Germany, 1979. Design by Lev Nussberg, collage by Vagrich

ideology of art were given a secondary meaning. I suppoe it is just then that
they felt a need to defend their identity. Institutions promoting Russian art were
founded, with collections, exhibitions and other media. Also, the emigres
formed their own inner public opinion and scale of evaluation. After some time
though, it turned out that their autarchy was failing. When the reduced rate of
criticism towards them due to their political aura no longer protected them and
even became embarrassing, a second period started at the beginning of the
1 980s. The first noteworthy criticism appeared concerning one-man exhibitions,
but there is still an atmosphere of caution around the global situation of this
immigrant community among professional art critics.

As an observer for many years of the movement of unofficial artists, I cer-
tainly have my own preferences concerning the trends and forms of expres-
sion that I favor most. This, however, is a subject for a separate publication. Since
I respect many valuable ways and experiments, I do not hide my sympathy
towards some of them, towards the authenticity of the metaphysical and sym-

EASTERN

EUROPEANS

IN NEW YORK

Opening: May 11,1985 9:00 P.M.“LaOaleria on El Bohio” 605 East 9th St. NYC
Houm 12Noon-fr00P.M., Seven Day» A Week, (through May 26th)

IVALEPttJ OtSTEANU
| FIUP POGOWSKI
BIMB? POLONY!

LEONID P1NCHE VSKI
CHIRHA RADOVANOVIC
MITZURA SAiGIAN
LEONID SOKOV
GABOR SZJTANYI
STEFAN TRtffA
DANIEL WNUK
KRZYSZTOF WODtCZKO
KRZYSZTOF /ARENSKI

J09EF*H HNEH
KRYSTWA JACHNPWISZ
SMACK JADWIGAS
BOZO KEMPERIi
KOMAR AND MELAMID
EWA KURYUK
EMORY IAOANYI
UZ+VAL

STANISLAV MLOOQZENIEC
THOMAS NON
IVANY! NORBERT

LASZLO NOSZEK

W STEFAN
f TRIffA

iiBgvBtwr
IIBIRIU BENIf
VAlfRW BOBOREU
HJ.ANA CCXEMAN
DORUCCVRK3
ORSOIYA t*QZD*K
LAILAfARCAS
STANOHLKO
HMA GfWOVIN
VAURY GfRtOVtN
VFSNA GOtfJBCVtC
ANWAS HAIAS?

Potter for the exhibition Eastern Europeans In Mew York, 1985.

holistic orientation and the intellectual rapacity of the grotesque, dramatic and
tragic, irony, parody and pastiche, trends so Russian rooted in Russia’s literary
culture especially in drama, and yet so universal. This tendency also includes
the art of unconventional books, the art of absurd objects, as practiced by
many emigre artists in Europe and in the USA. Some of them are presented in
this publication.

SAMIZDAT ART

Rimma and Valery Gerlovin

INTRODUCTION

As Russian artists, we are often asked to compare Russian art and life with
American. One instance of this occurred in 1982, when we were invited to
assemble an exhibition of Russian artists' books for Franklin Furnace gallery in
New York City. We called this exhibition “Russian Samizdat Art,” using the name
of the independent movement in literature, politics and art which, literally
translated, means "self-publishing." It is an ironic paraphrase of such terms as
Gosizdat-. state publishing.*

Samizdat art represents the original, unrestricted impulse to engage
moral and ideological problems, extending the idea of the artist’s book into
new territories. While the Russian Futurists first desecrated’ the book, they none-
theless preserved its form and economy. Samizdat art proceeds in a different
manner, transforming the book into various unusual objects with intense
messages. Emphasizing the principle rather than the form in new conditions,
there arise official and unofficial strata of culture In this sense samizdat is substan-
tially different from the artist’s book in America, which tends to estheticize the
book, emphasizing elements of craft and preserving the commodity function.
This inversion of book as an object to artistic practice marks, we think, an impor-
tant aspect of the contemporary art movement in the USSR: a symbolic samiz-
dat spirit, which implies a non-conformist effort to circumvent official censorship
In this sense then, the samizdat influence-its cultural and ideological message-

* This exhibition, held at the Franklin Furnace in 1982, has subsequently travelled
throughout the United States and Canada, attracting a good deal of attention.

can hardly be compared to the artist’s book movement in the West.

The book, a portable object of mass reproduction, nevertheless in-
timately communicates with the reader and becomes an exemplary instance
of the relationship between introversion and extroversion in the history of the
Russian Avant-Garde.

Russian Samizdat Art exhibition, installation view, Franklin Furnace Gallery, NT,
1982. Photo by Francis Hauert.

After the early heroic period of the Revolution, the contradiction
between ideal and reality destroyed the initially positive significance of the ex-
ternal, propagandistic elements of this production form. However, the intro-
verted aspects never died; they intensified and survived even during the cold-
est period of Stalinism. A useful analogy might be to compare the destinies of
the two great Russian poets, Mayakovsky and Pasternak: the vivid, intensely
creative life and sudden death of Mayakovsky with the half-underground sur-
vival and creation of Pasternak's philosophical and speculative lyrical poetry.

From the thirties onward, the making of original book objects was grad-
ually abandoned as a form of creation that was becoming increasingly
dangerous. Instead, the tendency was to produce a much simpler manuscript
of poetry or artwork.

With the Khrushchev thaw at the end of the fifties, the book as an art-form
re-emerged. Poets began to type carbon copies of their works, often
accompanied by their own drawings and collages, bound them, and cir-
culated their editions among friends. In this way, the art of Russian samizdat
(“self-published books,” as the poet Nikolai Glaskov called them for the first time
in a manuscript-book at the end of the fifties) came into being. Later, this move-
ment was taken up in other socialist countries.

Samizdat, as a cultural phenomenon, is distinct from Western practices
and was shaped by several factors, e.g., the strict control under Russia’s iron-
curtain isolation, national and spiritual traditions, and the supportive role of the
Russian intelligentsia.

A distinction should always be drawn between political samizdat, which
analyzes and criticizes the Soviet system, and literary and artistic samizdat,
which first aims not at criticism but at reflecting creative problems and values.
Unlike multiple poetic manuscripts, samizdat art is represented by visually and
textually elaborated pieces of art, book-objects done by multimedia artists
and poets. Samizdat art is not an institution, but a strategy. In the social and
cultural climate of contemporary Russia, literary and artistic samizdat
nonetheless took on a political flavor by virtue of its unofficial status and non-
conformist position.

There is no censorship per se in samizdat in either a political or an
editorial sense. Early samizdat works usually consisted of typed or handwritten
carbon copies. Printing equipment of any kind (including photo-copiers) is il-
legal and almost inaccessible, so one and the same copy is passed from hand
to hand accompanied by discussion and commentary.

This negative environment for modern art has at least one positive side:
forbidden fruit is sweet. This difficult and problematic social situation unites the
community of artists and poets within itself, influencing and initiating a serious,
profound art.

ENVIRONMENT

A commonly acknowledged phenomenon of contemporary Russian culture
is the coexistence of two strata: official and unofficial.

The Artists’ Union is the most prominent institution which shapes Soviet ar-
tistic ideology and style in a framework of socialist realism. Most art produc-

ed by members of the Artists’ Union is purchased by the Ministry of Culture by
means of special commissions. The Art Fund distributes orders among artists
in the Union. The works commissioned are usually paintings or sculptures, or
environmental sets for factories, collective farms, pioneer camps, and the like.
The range of prices is quite wide: the most expensive commissions are for
figures of leaders like lenin ; the least expensive, for ordinary citizens or animals.

Our concern, however, resides with those works which exceed, or at the
very least, operate on the margins of the framework of socialist realism: the
unofficial stratum, where samizdat art is one of the most controversial practices,
since it involves texts, and therefore invites censorship.

The independent community consists of different groups of artists, poets
and writers, composers and other creative people united, not by a common-
ality of style, but by their oppositional and heretical stance with regard to the
official culture. The intelligentsia, both technical and humanistic, plays a par-
ticipatory and supportive role as a cultural force. Quite unlike the milieu of
official openings, receptions or parties, communicative exchange flows freely
within this unofficial community. Artists gather to passionately discuss politics
and artistic matters, the destiny of Mother Russia, as they sit around the table

Members of the Artists' Union. They worked on the governmental project to paint
the workers and the metallurgical plant Uralmash, 1981.

sipping tea or vodka in their studios or private apartments.

Within this general oppositional stance, the independent artistic com-
munity is nonetheless divided on specific issues or trends, and distinctive groups
can be recognized. One of the first of these was the Lionozovo Group, named
after the barrack settlement near Moscow, wnere many artists gathered and
lived around the poet Evgeny Kropivnitsky in the early fifties. There are a number
of artists affiliated with this group, including Oscar Rabin, Lev and Valentina
Kropivnitsky (children of Evgeny), Vladimir Nemukhin, Nikolai Vechtomov, Lidiya
Masterkova, and others. Perhaps the figures who most represent the authen-
tic spirit of this group were the poets Genrikh Sapgir and Igor Kholin and the
painter Oscar Rabin, who later (in 1974) organized two politically important ex-
hibitions: one in Belyaevo (which was subsequently removed with bulldozers),
and another in the Izmailovo Park, named The Four Hours of Freedom.

In the sixties another Moscow group called Sretensky Boulevard,
gathered around the Estonian artist Ulo Sooster, who died in 1968. Such artists
as Ilya Kabakov, Vladimir Yankilevsky, Victor Pivovarov, Eric Bulatov, Oleg Vasiliev
and Yuri Sobolev shared similar ideological and esthetic values. Many of these
artists' studios were located in the heart of Moscow, adding a tint of the sym-

Left to rights Lidiya Masterkova, Oskar Rabin, Alexander Rabin, Henry Khudyakov,
Moscow, 1971. Photo by Igor Palmin.

bolic disposition of the sixties when people started to show work out of their
cellars. A lot of people congregated around the bohemian atmosphere of the
Blue Bird Cafe, where regular exhibitions and jazz concerts were arranged. The
artists of this group were intellectuals and well informed with regard to the
history of contemporary art. Using an international art language, they express-
ed the hopes of the Russian creative intelligentsia during the Khrushchev thaw.
It is not by chance that almost all of them have since become prominent in-
dividual artists.

There were other groups or unions that operated more like workshops
and were organized around energetic persons like Eiii Belyutin or Lev Nussberg.
Belyutin s large dacha (country house) near Moscow became a kind of center
primarily for unknown artists engaged in esthetic research and exploration. The
most unusual and flexible of these groups was Dvizheniye (Movement), organ-
ized by Lev Nussberg, which produced futurological kinetic environments often
accompanied or supplemented by colorful and romantic performances. Lev
Nussberg, Ernst Neizvestny and Elii Belyutin were the outstanding examples of
a new phenomenon in the Russian art world: artists who were sitting
simultaneously in two chairs, official and unofficial.

Neizvestny created his large governmental project, a sculpture for the
Aswan Dam in Egypt, and the bust on the tomb of Khrushchev; Nussberg de-
signed the decoration of Leningrad for the 50th Anniversary of the October
Revolution. Now both artists live in the United States. Twenty years later Lev

Nussberg comments: “It was a social and public chess game it required

a great deal of adventurism and dodgy resourcefulness." *

The sixties were marked by the resurgence of public interest in poetry,
more so even than in art. Hundreds of young people gathered near the
Mayakovsky Monument in the center of Moscow to hear young poets read,
with an intensity similar to that with which young peole gathered to listen to rock
music concerts in the United States. Subsequently, as a result of increasing
pressure from the authorities, this movement was compelled to retreat to art-
ists' studios and homes. It was around this time that the first books as art-objects
began to appear.

Older and more established poets, such as E. Kropivnitsky, I. Kholin, G.
Sapgir, G. Aygi, Y. Satunovsky, V. Nekrasov, whose works were well known in Mos-
covite circles, gave further impetus to the development of samizdat. Genrikh
Sapgir s sonnets on shirts represented an unexpected and fresh approach to
the traditional style of poetry. Samizdat editions of poetry spread widely. In

* Quoted from an interview in Russian Discussions, 1986, a video production by Rimma

and Valery Gerlovin.

Leningrad, Boris Taigin, in the early sixties, published Josef Brodsky, Gleb Gar-
bovsky, Nikolai Rubtsov and Victor Sosnora on his typewriter. In 1962 he put
together the poetic almanac Prisma (Prisms). According to the Leningrad poet
Konstantin Kuzminsky, Taigin spent some time in prison for his illegal production
of the recorded songs of Leshchenko (a singer of Russian petit-bourgeois
romances), prior to his publishing activities. The poet Vladimir Erl published in

At the loft of artist Ilya Kabakov. From left to right: Rimma Gerlovina, Elena
Yelagina, Valery Gerlovin, Ilya Kabakov, Igor Makarevich, Moscow, 1979. Photo
by Igor Makarevich.

samizdat several books of his visual poetry as well as those of his friends Alex-
ey Khvostenko and Yuri Galetsky. He called his publishing Poljza Delu (Com-
mon Weal).

The energetic group of Moscow poets-SMOG (an abbreviation for Union

of Young Geniuses-best known for reading their work in public, included among
their members L. Gubanov, A. Basilova, V. Oleinikov, Yu. Vishnevskaya and V. Len.
They were very active from 1964 to 1967, as the underground parallel to Evtu-
shenko’s group, which had already become an official lever for shaping the
minds of Soviet youth. In 1978 Andrey Voznesensky was appointed as a state
poet laureate of the USSR. Both Evtushenko and Voznesensky have been chos-
en by their government to play the role of cultural buffers between our coun-
tries and to serve as creative propagandists for Soviet life in the West.

The purpose of our article is not a chronology of events and names, but
to present tableaux vivants of the general mood of the last decade or so.

The seventies brought a new spirit of public skepticism and activism to
art. The wave of exhibitions in private apartments began to arouse great public
interest. For the moment, it was a sort of underground institution constantly in
conflict with the authorities. Almost all such apartment exhibitions were busted
by the police at the beginning of the eighties. The new generation of artists was
more independent and emancipated: without fear and hatred, full of social
mocking energy. The political environment has always been alien and perhaps
even hostile to most Russian artists in the post-WW II period. Propaganda pat-
terns started to appear in the art language of the seventies as an ironic anti-

At the group show in Sergei Bordachyov's apartment. Left to right: Lev Rubinshtein,
Natalya Shibanova, Andrei Demykin, Valery Gerlovin, Sergei Bordachyov, Andrei
Monastyrsky, Moscow, 1971. Photo by Andrei Abramov.

4 Sitting from left to right: Vagrich Bakhchanyan, Eduard Limonov, Vyacheslav Len;
standing: Igor Kholin, Genrikh Sapgir, Moscow, 1974.

dote. Art became more popular than poetry. The number of artists and the
variety of genres grew. Along with individual art, collective work now became
regular collaboration. Samizdat art flourished in its diversity of form and
expression.

Our personal experience allows us to describe the tendencies and the
spirit of this time in detail, so that we can present a factual picture of this world.

Our first studio was on Stoleshnikov Street, across from the Moscow Coun-
cil House, which is something like Gracie Mansion in New York City. We had no
toilet or telephone. It was a space shaped like and almost the size of the lid of
a concert piano. Such unrentable apartments often were written off to the art-
ists for minimum rent. We moved into several studios like this, where we held
many readings by such poets as Andrei Monastyrsky, Genrykh Sapgir Eduard
Limonov, Igor Dudinsky, Lev Rubinshtein, and many others.

As a result of such gatherings in 1973, we put together an original col-
lective assembling titled Aeronautic. The cut-out letters of the title seemed to
glide on the rope attached to the cover. Later, it was smuggled along with
some other book-objects of our collection to the West.

There were many examples of this sort of collective work, not necessarily
confined to art alone. For example, multimedia works by poet-director Evgeny
Kharitonov and his musical group lost Chance, or the spontaneous experimen-
tal theater of independent film director Alex Kiselyov. Kiselyov, a former actor
rom the Taganka Theater, worked as a gravedigger to make enough money
or his films, shooting in the meantime an intriguing documentary about his new
colleagues who worked in the Vaganjkovo Cemetery.

Many musical events were done in collaboration among artists, com-
posers and musicians. Contemporary music in the Soviet Union is among the
most elite of all art disciplines and has little contact with the general popula-
10 m We recall one incident that occurred in 1976 in one of the auditoriums in
!I- Moscow Conservatory, where John Cage's composition, commemorating
the 200th anniversary of the founding of the United States, was being
presented. The local administration that permitted this concert had no idea
what kind of music to expect. During the intermission they sent a fireman in to
stop the concert because of so-called dangerous instruments. The American
cultural attache began to protest, and the concert was subsequently resumed.

Another sound/action/performance indirectly connected with John
Cage happened in 1970, when with the poet Lev Rubinshtein and Dr Alex
Chachko, we recorded an improvised performance using accidental in-
struments like combs, scissors, pliers and a violin. Then we distributed the tape
in samizdat fashion, person-to-person, as if it were a very rare work by John
Cage’s son. It immediately became known in left-wing musical circles because
of its association with the name of and respect for the composer's supposed
tamer.

Sometimes unofficial art-works and performances contain latent ten-
sions which are seized upon as actualities because of a hidden ideological
significance This is always a risk in such activities. One of Rimma Gerlovina's ear-
ly cubic poems from 1974 produced just such a controversy. The work was done
on the faces of children’s blocks, using a layout derived from the faces of six
members of the Politburo, so that the spectator could by moving the blocks
combine, for example, Brezhnev’s eyebrows with Gromyko’s eyes and An-
dropov’s nose. For some time we had in our studio a jour fix, a one-day-a-week
open studio for friends that also functioned as a gallery by appointment. The
loaded content of our archetypical portrait images of Soviet leaders attracted
a lively interest on the part of our visitors.

At the Gerlovins' performance "Quiz." From left to right: Ivan Chuikov, Evgeniya
Chuikova, Vyacheslav Sokhransky, his son, Rimma Gerlovina, Oleg Yakovlev, Galina
Malik, Valery Gerlovin, Mariza Torchia, Alexander Urusov. All these participating
artists and poets were asked the same question — in what sequence they will die.
The winner will receive a prise, probably posthumously. From the book-object
Zerkaljnaya Igra (Mirror Game), Moscow, 1977.

While similarities in the visual elements, illusionistic style, and esthetic im-
pertinence between the Russian Futurists and the art of samizdat artists have
o ten been pointed out, there are, we think, significant differences. The crucial
difference between the Russian Futurists, who flourished in a time of political
innovation and emotional upsurge by provoking the prerevolutionary establish-
ment, and contemporary samizdat artists resides in the radically different con-
texts and atmosphere within which each respectively worked. The spirit of
samrzdaf art is perhaps more closely related to the generation of the Russian
bsurdists, rather than to the Futurists. Many contemporary Russian multimedia
artists have been significantly influenced by the Oberiu group (an abbrevia-
tes and thimes Ciati ° n ^ ReQ ' ^ ° f ^ ° Ctive in Lenin9rad in the twen ‘

This group included, among others, Daniil Kharms, Alexander Vveden-
sky and Nikolai Zabolotsky. Their ideas of total irrationality and irony in the world
of literature, theater and real life anticipated the European Theater of the Ab-

con / emporary Russian artists as well. Unfortunately, the
work of the Oberiu is not widely known in the West. In comparison with the

French Theater of the Absurd, the Russian school, with the possible exception
of Kharms, is more lyrical and never excludes the possibility of salvation and
deliverance. Perhaps this is because one can always blame reactionary
circumstances. y

The changes inherent in the transformation of Russian social and men-
tal life were particularly irrational and cruel for the intelligentsia, who perceived
the romantic ideals of the revolution as having been replaced by an increas-
ingly static and mechanical social life which promoted lower-middle class
values. The grotesque violates everyday life, yet out of this a general balance
|s mamtamed. There is a liberation from historical notions of necessity and pro-
phesy: Russians are not a nation of rationalists, even less a reasonable people-
passing through the prism of politics, such absurdist language can enrich its
depth and dialectical force. Absurde canere in Latin means “to sing out of
tune ; in the Soviet situation it means to sing out of the conventional tune
Our own work has always contained such a language of lyrical ambigu-
ily. In the performance “Zoo” (1977), we spent a day, naked, in a cage labelled
Homo Sapiens. Mammals. Male and Female.” The documentation of this event
was interpreted by the Western press as a symbolic image of Russian artists dur-
ing the Eastern European Biennale in Venice in 1977. This non-conventional
metaphoric incongruity permits escape from or at least suspends, the law-like

The Oe r| ° vi „s- performance "Zoo," photo by Victor Novatsky. From the book ►
Zerkaljnaya Igra (Mirror Came), Moscow, 1977.

HOMO SAPIENS

K/1ACC M/1EK0F1I/1TAI0111IM
GROUP OF MAMMAIES

CAMEU » CAMKA
MALE UNO FEMALE

character and meaninglessness of the world’s order. Our cage protected us
not only in our motherland of vapid propaganda, but here too, in the capital
of the monetarist hegemony. The world is not so large, as people have thought.

The homelessness of the artist, the adoption of traditions of non-
conformism, symbolize the emergence and the preservation of freedom within
a world of necessity. It is incumbent on the artist to use this freedom to test the
limits of his own marginality.

It is worthwhile pointing out some national features that have un-
doubtedly influenced all forms of creation in Russia. The ideological aspect has
always prevailed over the esthetic in Russian art and literature, through which
writers and artists have sought, often intuitively, to solve moral, religious and
social problems. “The madness of the poet,” as the Greeks said, is one of the
chief characteristics of many Russian artists. Kazimir Malevich, in his article “To
the Innovator of the Whole World,” wrote: “All art exhibitions should be exhibits
of projects for the transformation of the world picture.” The spiritual, political and
esthetic innovations seized upon by the Russian imagination, sometimes in a
state of near wildness, were widespread and energetic in the twenties; later,
artists became self-analytical, and the art community withdrew into itself. In
the early avant-garde movement all participating artists, even the middle-
ranking ones, were visible and later became heroes. It was an easy period. The
challenge now is to be highly creative in a monotonous conservative period.

If we are to characterize the current world view in Moscow society, we
must mention the attitude of some artists towards the classic Russian Avant-
Garde. The older generation, the flower of the Stalinist era, regards this phe-
nomenon with hostility, considering it a hierarchy of bosses in a spiritual space
whose stock is falling. Often in history we find that tyranny has roots in
democracy, but art based on oppression always overcomes itself gradually.
Once upon a time Art Commissar Malevich dismissed Chagall from a similar
position in Vitebsk because of his conservatism. But later, the Stalinist wave of
social realism in its turn silenced all avant-garde artists. In Vladimir Tatlin’s small
retrospective exhibition in 1 977 in Moscow at the House of Writers one of his last

letters to the authorities (1953) was Shown. It was written in pencil. The artist
asked to have his beggar’s pension increased, enumerating his great services
in the past to the motherland. This letter was removed from the exhibition
several days later.

In an atmosphere of obligatory public activities it is hard to overcome
a feeling of antagonism towards the one-time creative energy of Russian art-
ists. There is nothing antihistorical in this, either: it is sufficient merely to glance
at a comparative description of the culture of, for example, the Roman Empire
and Byzantium, both of which ended in academic art and decadence. Dur-
ing the formation of a new society, creative individuals have always found
themselves in harmony with it, while at the moment of disintegration the most
talented individuals come out in opposition. The same is happening now, too,
in the present period of dissolution of Russia, the Third Rome: the next genera-
tion looks upon its predecessors from the conservative viewpoint of post-
modernism. But, as time passes, phenomena are once again re-evaluated; yet
we still prefer the Renaissance to Mannerism. However paradoxical it may
seem, socialist society has, apart from state kitsch (official art), a wide-ranging,
non-conventional mannerism of its own: from slick surrealist to souvenir religious
paintings.

In the beginning of this century Russian artists finally liberated themselves
from a home-grown philosophy (see the Peredvizhniki movement). Under Stalin
the process went into reverse, while simultaneously providing the soil for non-
conformism, which was often expressed in a heavy self-absorption combined
with an utopian idea of independence from the social cosmos. At the same
time this art, due to the sacrifice and stronger beliefs required, became more
sacramental and altruistic.

In Russia the leap from the medieval to the 19th century Golden Age
omitted the lengthy European Renaissance. This equals, in some sense, the later
social jump from slavery to socialism, which also took place in art. Critical
Realism was almost immediately replaced by the splash of the avant-garde.
In the old days, Chancellor Bismarck used to say about the Russian character:
“Russians harness slowly, but ride fast.”

In 1913 Michael Larionov and Natalia Goncharova wrote: “The future is
behind us” in their Rayonists and Futurists: A Manifesto. “Who will be taken into
the future?” (yet another global problem for the Russian consciousness), Ilya
Kabakov asks readers of the magazine A-Ya with camouflaged frankness. The
concept of genetic selection, assessment of their merits in the advancing
future-that is what constantly concerns artists, whether non-conformists, semi-
official figures or the countless servants of the state muse. For this reason a
declaration by an anonymous sculptor, also in A-Ya, goes like this: “I am con-
scious of myself as one of the last in the line of nearly extinct classics in our
vanishing millenium.” Such a statement may be regarded as a typical

manifestation of his accumulated thoughts and feelings. However, life in com-
plete isolation renders this redeeming idea thoroughly justified and legitimate.

The middle seventies was a period of growing discussions about the in-
ternational destiny of art. Our circle of friends narrowed to the people who
shared identical interests in art. There were many evenings when artist Ivan
Chuikov fluently translated articles from Flash Art, Studio International and Art
Forum. In 1 976 these friendly evenings took the form of an unofficial group ex-
hibition in the loft of Leonid Sokov, a member of the Artists' Union, who had
already decided to emigrate. We shall dwell at length on this exhibition as a
typical example of an apartment show in the broad sense. There were six other
parallel exhibitions in different places in Moscow. Our branch was represented
by seven artists: Ivan Chuikov, Alexander Yulikov, Igor Shelkovsky, Sergei
Shablavin, Leonid Sokov and ourselves.

This event attracted thousands of people, without any advertising, of
course. The news spread by word of mouth. One day during this eleven-day ex-
hibition, about 400 people attended. Once there was an incident when a
group of young secret service agents dressed in American jeans tried to pro-
voke a scandal in order to close the exhibition. But there was no reaction ex-
cept the puzzled looks of the artists and the spectators. During the exhibition
Alex Kiselyov shot a movie about this event. Right after this exhibition we took
our friend, a European art historian who accidentally was in Moscow, through
the studios of our friends. As a result in 1977 Flash Art gave big coverage to all
these new artists in its special issue "Documenta 6 and the USSR.” * The same
group of artists was shown in the first issue of A-Ya, a Russian art review publish-
ed in Paris. In Moscow, the editor Alexei Alexeyev, with the assistance of one ar-
tist (whose name we shall avoid for security reasons) and our help, collected
materials that were processed and published by artist Igor Shelkovsky, who had
already emigrated to Paris.

This was also a time of growing connections with Europe. We personally
did several collaborative works with the visiting Austrian artist Renate Bertlmann.
The Eastern European Biennale in Venice, that travelled later in Europe, and the
Bochum Museum show in West Germany attracted a good deal of European
attention to contemporary Russian art.

* Flash Art, * 76/77, 1977 .

< Above: at an unofficial group exhibition, Moscow, 1976. Photo by Valentin Serov.
Below: at the studio of sculptor Boris Orlov, Moscow, 1978. From left to right: Natalia
Abalakova, Michael Odnoralov, Dmitry Prigov. Photo by the Cerlovins.

1977 was the turning-point. All loyal artists were accepted into the reor-
ganized Gorkom of Graphics (City Committee of Graphics). Membership gives
artists not only the possibility to exhibit, but also the right not to work and to get
a studio. Under the slogan “Who does not work, does not eat,” many artists were
accused of parasitism, which is illegal in Russia. Now it was easier to squeeze
the radical part of the art scene Oscar Rabin was deprived of citizenship; many
artist-troublemakers emigrated.

The paragraph devoted to freedom of speech in the Soviet Constitution
has always been profoundly ambiguous, while censorship has served as the
main weapon of ideological control. The basic human right to hold one’s own
opinions and practice them by any legal means is possible only when and
where it does not contradict the state's point of view. To this day it is very difficult
in the USSR to show textual objects in public exhibition spaces. In 1978 the ad-
ministration removed our works before the opening of our first and only official
show, which was held at the House of Scientists. Three different commissions
called these works provocative and harmful. The poster designed for this group
show was withdrawn, and our names were scratched out of all the printed in-
vitations with razor blades. In 1978, we applied for emigration, left our part-time
jobs, and lived for one year supporting ourselves by selling our library. After a
year’s wait, we got our visas and left Russia in the Summer of 1979.

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Two invitation* for the group *how at tho Houso of Scientists. In the second variant
the names of Rimma and Valery Gerlovin have boon scratched out with razor
blades. Moscow, 1978.

Above! at the country house of artists Anatoly Zhigalov, whore a series of per- p
formancos took place. From loft to right! Sven Gundlakh, Elena Yelagina, Andrei
Monastyrsky, Nikolai Panitkov, Pogorolovo, 1981. Photo by Igor Makarovich.
Boiowi at Collective Actions Group performance near Moscow. From loft to right!
Nikita Alokseyev, Elena Yelagina, Igor Makarovich, 1981.

As we wrote earlier, repression that traditionally comes in waves has a
long history in our land, going back to the medieval era of Ivan the Terrible.
Many Decembrist poets died in Siberia; Alexander Pushkin was never allowed
to go abroad; Fyodor Dostoevsky was condemned to penal servitude for 4
years, etc. Russia is too vast and has no need to count her heroes.

Soviet socialism developed in two opposite directions: towards eman-
cipation and simultaneously towards the destruction of human rights, as
Dostoevsky predicted in his "legend of the Grand Inquisitor” in his Brothers
Karamazov. “In the name of freedom, the most horrible crimes against freedom
were committed.” Russia contains enormous contrasts of beauty and barren-
ness, linked with a dramatically violent history. Wild imagination, humor,
sadness, irony and fatalism all live closely together. Our national philosophy
has never been fully developed as a pure discipline, but it saturates our
literature, poetry and art. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Goncharov, Pasternak, Platonov,
Malevich, Kandinsky, Tatlin tried to treat eternal enigmas. In our time the
language of Russian art has shifted into an involuntary ambiguous mode. As
pointed out in Nietzsche's famous aphorism: “We have art in order not to die
from truth.”

ARTISTS AND CHARACTERS

Different forms of self-publishing preceded samizdat art. Literary, political,
musical, scholastic and even folk variations found their reflection in this syn-
cretic art form.

We discussed the influence and patterns of literary and political self-
publishing in the previous section. Many hand-tinted postcards and booklets
about discredited heroes were sold in the markets and trains, usually by deaf-
mutes. Musical samizdat found its beginning in homemade records termed
"records on ribs.” They were made from the clever conversion of used x-ray film
for recording Western music and/or Russian romances. In the sixties the songs
of contemporary Russian bards were spread far and wide on countless tapes;
this includes music by Alexander Galich, Bulat Okudzhava, Vladimir Vysotsky,
Yulii Kim, Yuzef Oleshkovsky and others.

Henry Khudyakov (born 1930) was among the first in the beginning of
the sixties to hold exhibitions of his book objects in the studios of Moscow ar-
tists. With his visually innovative poetry Khudyakov, as early as the middle fifties,
was a forerunner of samizdat art, although a lone wolf. He was not connected
to any groups or trends. He states: “The reason for the poetry was the meeting
of the young organism (himself) with the problems of life, that could be dis-
solved in the harmony of the rhythm.” *

Henry Khudyakov and his wife Vera, Moscow 1960.

All quotations ot Henry Khudyakov are from the video film Russian Discussions pro-
duced by the Gerlovins, 1986.

Above: Henry Khudyakov, Keshki-Mishki III Tretii k Lishnim (Kitty-Candies er the ►
Third to the Odd Ball), Moscow, 1963, 223 pp. 8" x 11"; 20.5 cm x 28 cm, photographs
assembled in an account book with handwritten commentary. Below: Katsaveiki
(Shot Fur-trimmed Jackets), Moscow, 196T, 8" x S'A"; 20.5 cm x 14 cm; original book
and reprinted facsimile in the SMS, #3, 1968, USA.

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Henry Khudyakov, poem Right by the Blatk Sea, 1955 - 1962, translated by Gerald
Janecek: Into the bromide of Tauris from the Black Sea coast. . . from dampness
/ Is it? Sun?! / A cottage . . . / Where . . a misery shakeof f! . . / To Worn out (me)/ Came
the thought . . . / Similarly/ Into the world that was here before/ Worn-out [me]! . . //
Through the cypresses / On the background of a mountain ... an axe wedged! . . /
From caprices of outline. . .

Koshki-Mishki ilizhe Tretii K Lishnim (Kitty-Candies or the Third to the Odd
Ball, 1963), one of his early books was typed on carbon paper in ten copies,
accompanied by a manifesto and a handwritten commentary, and
copyrighted by his own publishing company Khudyakov did not have his own
typewriter at that time and had to type out the book at his job at a secret
Moscow aviation institute, where he worked as a translator, until he was caught

Henry Khudyakov, Book of Neckties, NY, 1977, 11" x 19"; 30.5 cm x 48 cm, collages.

typing and fired. This book consists mainly of his visual poems, representing a
new interpretation of Russian morphology, in which, in his own words, he
“elevated various graphical solutions into a system, like that of musical notes.”
Khudyakov has written poems and filled account books and children's draw-
ing pads with his drawings and collages. One of his handwritten books, Kat-
saveiki (Shot Fur-trimmed Jackets), was reprinted in facsimile in the international
edition of SMS, No. 3, in 1968. Henry Khudyakov became famous in Moscow not
only for his poetry, but also for the somewhat unexpected logic of his interpreta-
tion of his own work, a new "morphological” translation of Shakespeare’s

"Hamlet” and his highly eccentric behavior. “That's a boy, Khudyakov!” as the
poet is fond of saying of himself.

Henry Khudyakov is a typical example of the Russian creative personal-
ity, whose madness is deeply mixed with great talent, whose reactionary sen-
sibility is expressed in experimental art language. "I would stop art history at
the Post-Impressionists. There is only roguery after it . . . Picasso and Mayakov-

Henry Khudyakov with his works, NY, 1982.

sky are major swindlers,” Henry said right after his highly respectful comments
on the early poetry of Boris Pasternak. He sees art “as a birth of vibration bet-
ween soul and color.” Like Don Quixote, he responds with hostility to the com-
mercial breed of American artists "obsessed with the idea to get a show and
a gallery by any means . . ."

The poetic arsenal, from the beginning, was not enough for him. Upon
moving to New York in 1974 Khudyakov made a series of fold-out books of col-
lages of ties and shopping bags with the aid of paper, fabric and glass. Subse-
quently he began carefully to embroider glass, stones, tapes, bandages and

other fleamarket treasures on jackets, shirts, t-shirts and shoes in the same
fashion. In the Village Voice, Peter Schjeldahl called his works a “mad boutique."
He creates elaborate theories about his flourescent colors and shining labyrin-
thine patterns in his works. Dozens of shirts with false painted ties, stationary
stuffed coats, real mannequins in wild outfits, hundreds of paintings and draw-
ings gather around last year’s Christmas tree, which he keeps as a pet. A visitor's
eyes are sunblinded by all these art wonders which Henry calls The Museum
of Khudyakov.

Ilya Kabakov (born 1933) was already a well-known artist when, during
the 1970s, he became an ideological leader among his artist friends. While
he himself is a strong and prudent person, Kabakov, like a queen bee, attracts
disciples to himself, nourishing and at the same time nourished by them.

Ilya Kabakov, painting Sobakin, Moscow, 1980, 83% x 118"; 310 cm x 300 cm, enamel
on masonite.

◄ Henry Khudyakov, Letter from Heaven MT Jacket (Strawberry Patch], NY, 1981.

Ilya Kabakov and Andrei Monastyrsky, ZHCK #18 (Public Housing #18), first page
of the book, Moscow, 1980, 12V' x 9’/«";31.5 cm x 23.5 cm, 12 pp., photographs,
collages, handwritten text assembled in a typical Soviet folder.

In 1973 he began his series of philosophic-encyclopedic albums, quite
large book-boxes with drawings in Indian ink and colored pencils, accom-
panied by handwritten commentaries, often from the mouths of his naively
shrewd mask heroes. The series includes more than 25 albums, among them:
Lbv Glebovich’s Jokes, Shower-Comedy, They are Flying, Anna Petrovna is Seeing
a Dream, Arkhipov-looking-through-the-window, Coincidences of Lev Lvovitch
and Vases. *

In his works Kabakov touches upon the virtually universal problems of
modern Russia, interpreting social and religious features through the refined
ambiguity characteristic of him. Ilya Kabakov's personality seems to combine
the all but incompatible: he is a man of the world and a cunning politician, sur-
rounded by all the comforts of Soviet life and respected in the Moscow Union
of Artists, while at the same time he is also a subtle artist devoted to his craft
who preaches spiritual values.

The same is true of his art. The visual and verbal language of the albums
is reminiscent of the style of wall newspapers posted in public housing offices
and simultaneously of the children’s book illustrations the artist does for money.
At the same time suffering and defenseless images roam his works, which are
imbued with the theme of faceless reality opposed to the cosmic freedom of
the spirit. Each page is a kind of metaphysical picture of time and space. The
topographical style with which the albums are constructed, the fantastic mingl-
ing of different times and physical scales (a garderobe as the universe) and
the introduction of absurd texts appear on the surface as a continuation of
Daniil Kharms' traditions of logic and of the text works of the early Magritte
Often the style of his work reveals a flash of affectation, both in the drawing and
in the obscure philosophical subtexts. However, the powerful epic approach,
seriousness and the depth of Kabakov’s albums place them among the best
examples of contemporary Russian culture.

The manner in which these albums are presented, resembling the first
experimental shows of the Lumiere brothers, is characteristic. After placing the
book on a lectern, the author himself turns the pages and reads the text to the

* Russian titles: “Shutki Lva Glebovicha," “Dush-comediya,” Ljetayjut," “Anna tetrovna Vidit
Son,’’ “Voknoglyadyashchii Arkhipov" “Sovpageniya Lva Lvovicha,” and "Vazy.”

Ilya Kabakov albums, Moscow, 1973, 20V' x 13V'; SI cm x 33 cm; ink and color pencil ►
on paper, fabric covered box with loose pages. Above; two pages from
Voknoglyadyaohthii Arkhipov (Arkhipov-looking-through-the-window). Below from
left to right: Shutki Lva Giobovitha (Lev Glebovich's Jokes) and Igra Arkadiya
Lvov it ha (Game of Arkadi! Lvovich).

audience, which sits before him, as in an auditorium. This performance lasts from
two to four hours, during which the audience passes through various states of
immersion in Kabakov’s metaphysical values; these are based on paradoxes,
which are often of a prophetic or tragic character.

Ilya Kabakov’s work combines in itself two attitudes opposed to the of-
ficial point of view which holds sway in Russia at the present time: a percep-
tion of Soviet reality as an absurd and inhumane historical fact and, at the
same time, moralizing of a religio-philosophical character. In the non-
conformist art of Russia a quite strange phenomenon has emerged: a double
opposition, whereby many artists, particularly those of the younger generation,
have been accused of lacking the necessary spiritual didacticism.

One of the most active persons in the field of ironic political samizdat was
Vagrich Bakhchanyan (born 1938). Since 1963 he has been producing his

Hyo Kabakov, painting Stcnd Ootov (The Stand is Ready), Moscow, 1981, enamel
on masonite.

systematic pieces of nonsense. Examples such as a large number of mirror-
books with frottage texts which can only be read through the mirror accom-
panying them; Bakh, as everybody calls him, consciously and methodically

VAGRICH BAKHCHANYAM

RUSSIAN

p R 0 paganda ART PERFORMANCE

Vagrich Bakhchanyan, cover of report on his performance at the Museum of Modern
Art, NT, 1978.

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developed the genre of the samizdat book as an art object. From the very
beginning he used ready-made techniques. Vagrich is fond of saying “How you
choose, not what you do, is the important thing.” In Moscow he worked as an
artist-caricaturist for the newspaper Literaturnaya Gazeta, where he introduced
collage media. He was however restricted by the administration of the Gazeta
to a maximum of two elements per collage in order to make them clear to
the censors.

Bakhchanyan’s short books reflect the character of the author and his
desire to realize as quickly as possible the ideas and projects that occur to him
with lightning suddenness, many of which have never come to fruition: for ex-
ample, a tailored fur-coat of lard, which would have been put over the nak-
ed body, with the lard inside. During 1968-69 he made and distributed to his
friends a large number of his texts and books of rubbings. Many of them were
unique since Bakh, no ball of fire, was not in a position to occupy himself with
the tedious business of copying; so almost all his texts had to be retyped in
Moscow by his friends. Among the large number of his works one can find some
raw, unfinished pieces.

In New York, where he moved in 1974, he has continued to produce art
in the same manner, like the book on the back of a jeans jacket. In 1979,
dressed as a walking agitpunkt (propaganda center), covered from head to
foot with slogans like “Stalin is Lenin today,” "Beware, savage dog” and “Why
is there no vodka on the moon?”, he strolled about the Russian Avant-Garde
room in New York’s Museum of Modern Art, arousing the acute irritation of the
authorities. On his letters he always sticks a stamp, “Vagrich Bakhchanyan, Presi-
dent Reagan’s Advisor on Mail Art.” He does not write poems, he writes menus,
casualty notices, dreams, and he still does not speak English.

Many Russian artists use very ironic political images and language,
usually witty and ambiguous although very serious at the core. It contrasts with
the often dry didacticism that informs so much political art in America.
Bakhchanyan was probably one of the first people involved in samizdat art who

■4 Vagrich Bakhchanyan, from the series Frottazhi na Naidennykh Ookumentakh
(Rubbings on Found Documents), Kharkov, 1962, 9" x 14"; 23 cm x 30.5 cm, rubbing
on a tutor's certificate, dated 1913.

Vagrich Bakhchanyan, rubbings, Kharkov, 1965. On the left above: Sovetzkil ►
Khudozhnik (Soviet Artist), 7V x Sit"; 18 cm x 13 cm, below: from the series
Frottazhi na Maldonnykh Ookumentakh (Rubbings on Found Documents), "Pis|ma"
(Letters dated 1909), 4%." x 5’A."; 4.5 cm x 13.5 cm. On the right above:
"Obyavleniya" (Ads), rubbing on the advertisement from Petrovka Street, Moscow,
1972, 8 It" x 6 It"; 20.5 cm x 17 cm. Below: from the series Zerkallnye Knigi (Mirror
Books), rubbings, mirrors, Moscow, 1971, 1H" x 81t", 30 cm x 20.5 cm.

started the “misfunctional” modifications of the Soviet leaders. He says: “I was
never a landscapist.” His mini-play in 1970, for the 1 OOth anniversary of Lenin’s
birth, became a popular joke: “A big crowd gathers in front of the Lenin
Mausoleum, from which a surgeon issues and proclaims, rubbing his hands: 'He
will live!’ Everybody applauds.” Bakhchanyan summarized two symbols of Russia
and America in his poem Brezhnev and Pepsi-Cola in 1 974. He likes to tell the
story about his proposal to make a Russian group exhibition in New York in 1979
for the 1 OOth anniversary of Stalin, and how another Russian artist Vitaly Komar

104

Vagrich Bakhchanyan, Mukh Uima (Heaps of Flies], Moscow, 1973, typewritten texts
and markers, 81" x 5 21 cm x 14. 7 cm. The last letter of the first word of the title
(fch) and first two letters of the next word (vf) form the taboo word "khvi" (cock).

objected, saying that "nobody will be interested in the image of Stalin today
in the USA.”

In 1982 he made a collage newspaper Novoye Russkoye Stovo (New
Russian Word), a parody on the emigre newspaper of the same name. Bakh’s
version consisted solely of obituaries from this Russian-language newspaper.
Later it was published under the title Myortvye Dushechki (Dead Sweethearts)
after Gogol’s Dead Souls. Only his famous personal charm and wit prevented
his name from becoming anathema in emigre circles.*

Bakhchanyan admits that the time is not right to make paintings. Long
ago, at the beginning of our century, Russian Futurists called artists to go out
in the streets. Mayakovsky wrote: “Streets are our brushes; squares are our
palettes.” Vagrich sees the future of his works not on the walls, but in book form.
“How many people can see the exhibition, but the audience of a book is
unlimited,” he says, pinning his hopes on Russians’ traditional love for books.

Alexander M. was Bakhchanyan’s first publisher. In 1971 he typed on the
typewriter his friend’s book Butylka Supa (The Bottle of Soup) in seven copies
with imprint and hardcover calico binding. The painter Peter Belenok made
Vagrich’s one portrait using carbon paper for all copies. Belenok’s own pain-
tings, mixed with collages and splashes of paint, were artistically opposed to
his sculptures of national heroes like Chapayev or Kirov, which he did for money.
All these heavy casts of bodies in uniforms used to soak in Peter’s personal
bathtub.

Alexander M. introduced another sort of samizdat activity: the publishing
of folk geniuses. Once, he found a pile of letters in the garbage. He combined
and elaborated them under the title Pisjma Adama (Letters of Adam). It was
a sort of epistolary tragicomedy about postwar morals and manners among
the lower-middle class. As an experiment he sent this manuscript to several
publishing houses and got one and the same answer: “It is too artificial, bizarre
and unreal.”

He collected and edited several similar books, based on letters to
the editor. All these pieces shared a Kafkaesque vision of life, like Syostry

' Dushechka means “sweetheart" and at the same time is a diminutive of dusha (soul).
Bakhchanyan chooses obituaries of and by emigres who tend to write all names in
diminutive form or use antiquated feudal titles which in contemporary literary Russian
often sound unintentionally humorous.

Vagrich Bakhchanyan, left to right; Stalin with the Fate of Lenin, NY, 1976, collage, t
18" x IS"; 4S.7 cm x 38.1 cm. Lenin, NY, 1983, book-poster, consists of 36 books, each
has 10 pp., 3 14" x 3V«"; 6 cm x 7.S cm.

105

Kazamazovy (Sisters Kazamazov) or the collection of Philosoph Zherebilo on the
universal problems of life ranging from the pornographic significance of women
in trousers to the methods of struggle against Chiang Kai-shek. Such pseudo
models of the world, like Leonardo da Vinci’s, run through many book-projects
dreamed up by Russian provincial philosophers, who mail their work to various
official publishers.

108

Nikiphor Zayats, ABVGD (ABCD), Omsk, 1969, 11" x 814"; 8 cm x 22 cm. Photographs
and original drawings of projects for automatic seed sowers, military uniforms,
movie houses, color-photography inventions, etc.

In the seventies, Alexander M. typed several books by different poets in-
cluding Eduard Limonov with drawings by Vagrich Bakhchanyan, who many
years later in New York did the cover design for the first edition of Limonov's It’s
me, Edichka. Eduard Limonov himself had a much bigger publishing business.
He typed his poems (in the style of the Oberiu), using carbon paper, seven
copies at a time: the last one usually came out almost blank. As he admits, he
illegally sold about 500 copies, many of them to members of the Artists' Union.
In a short time his public activity and talented garish poetry made him known
in Moscow, where he, as well as Vagrich Bakhchanyan, had moved from
Kharkov.

During this period, collaborative works between artists and poets
became rather popular. In 1972-73 poet Lev Rubinshtein and Valery Gerlovin
put together two books in two copies. The text was written partly in the poet’s
hand, partly typed. Valery did color carbon paper monoprints in his own
elaborate technique. Many Moscow poets and writers have produced hand-
made bindings for their own typewritten works. That was how Lev Rubinshtein

Standing from left to right: Peter Belenok and Vagrich Bakhchanyan with their
friends, Moscow, 1972. Photo by V. Plotnikov.

(born 1947) began at the end of the 1960s. Later, he collaborated with the
photographer Gosha Sandler to publish several original photobooks.

Many of lev’s advanced ideas remained in the area of fantasy for a long
time because of the author’s attachment to traditional structure. In his early
works, a playful interpretation of lyrical verses could already be seen: in 1973,
for example, he wrote a poem on small wood planks which could be shuffled,

110

Lev Rubinshtein, Valery Gerlovin, Vtoraya Kniga (The Second Book), Moscow, 1973,
ed.2, 8" x 12%"; 20 cm x 32 cm. Color carbon paper print, handwritten and typed
text.

enabling the reader to vary the sequence of lines at will. At the present time
he is, to quote his own words, “a total systematizer of poetry.”

The content of his conceptual books always has a theoretical, almost
sterile, character, which stands in sharp contrast to the man, a convivial and
extremely lively person in private life.

However, from time to time, the author's personality breaks through in less
ambitious and inventive works like Kniga Odnogo Sonet a (Book of One Son-
net), 1973, which is tightly bound with a cord, within which are twelve carbon
copies of the same sonnet, unreadable until one reaches the last page. Later

Dmitry Prigev, Stikhogrammy (Graphic Poetry), Moscow, 1979. ►

works, like Katalog Komediinykh Novshestv (Catalog of Comedic Novelties)
and Programma Robot (Program of Works), represent his customary elabora-
tion of linguistic points and reflect the boredom of life and bureaucracy.

The poet and sculptor Dmitry Prigov (born 1940) combines verbal and
plastic techniques in his work. Many of his creations make use of the methods
of visual and concrete poetry, and the precise proportions and cryptographic
mastery of his work are particularly arresting. His terse telegrams, such as “stu-
dent stop killed an old woman stop with an axe stop he suffers terrible torments
stop dostoevsky,” are stuck on the pages of an eponymous book in the form
of telegram tapes. Prigov has published a whole series of booklets in carbon
copies, written in the author’s typical astringent language, which was once
called the poetry of policemen and firemen.

Beginning with two-dimensional visual compositions, at the end of the
seventies he moved on to three-dimensional compositions on cans: the poetry
of labels, one might say. For example, Prophetic Can, 1978, is a meditative text
printed on a cut-out spiral label strip that shrinks to a black dot. Piles of multi-
colored cans in his studio recall the windows of Russian provincial grocery
shops. All his later three-dimensional compositions are ultimately rooted in his
creative alter ego-the attitude of a sculptor. The majority of Dmitry Prigov’s
works are rich in social symbolism and bureaucratic cliches.

Vsevolod Nekrasov (born 1934) is one of Russia’s best contemporary
poets, the creator of an original lyrical and administrative syntax and of a
touchingly noble versification that draws on the barbarous language of ab-
breviations. His paradigmatic devices combine clarity and purposefulnes of
thought with the precision of metaphorical mini-forms.

Vsevolod Nekrasov is a virtuoso reader of his sound-representational
works, of which he has perfect recall, although all his notes are in unbelievable
disorder. Here is one of his shorter pieces:

Freedom is
Freedom is
Freedom is

Freedom is freedom (1962)

d Above: Dmitry Prigov at his studio; below: his poems on cans, Moscow, 1978, photo
by the Cerlovins.

Vsevolod Nekrasov, series of minibooks, Moscow, 1981; each page 2 \" x IV'; 6 cm ►
x 6 cm.

113

From time to time Vsevolod Nekrasov turns his attention to textual ob-
jects: for example, a miniature book of signs and words, which is strung on to
a key ring like a rosary. In another mini-book the word rano (early) is gradually
inverted until it is transformed on the last of thirty-two pages into Pora (it is time).

It would be difficult not to mention Vilen Barsky (born 1930) in this arti-
cle. This Kiev poet now living in Germany used to visit Moscow occasionally,
bringing his books with him. His witty and penetrating verse structures with their
lyrical and philosophical symbols were cast in the same laconic, representa-
tional style that was characteristic of the Moscow group of poets. This is one of
his more famous poems:

To da Syo (one thing and another) (a haiku)

tyodaso

tadosyo

todyosa

116

Vilen Barsky, Slova (Words), Kiev, 1976-80. Photo by the author.

Vilen Barsky, Poslaniye Tualetnogo Rulona (Message o# Toilet Paper), Kiev, ►
1977-1981; a second version was done in Dortmund, West Germany.

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The political artists Vitaly Komar (born 1943) and Alexander Melamid
(born 1945) made a conceptual transposition of their ideas into book form,
when they pasted articles about themselves in The New York Times into the last
chapter of the Bible, thus testifying involuntarily to a certain degree of egocen-
tricity. In Moscow they constructed several book objects, the most interesting
of which was Passport for Trans-State ( 1 977) for a new nation created by the ar-
tists with passports, money and Declaration of Independence, etc. Anybody
can be a citizen of Trans-State “who in his own opinion falls outside the struc-
ture of all known functioning state systems."

Although their output in the book genre is not so large, there is a case
for considering their art as an example of the transformation of artists who work
in the political cosmos. The Moscow period of Komar and Melamid’s work was

Komar and Melamid, Moscow, 1976. Photo by Igor Makarevich.

< Komar and Melamid, Language of Trans State, Moscow, 1977, canvas scroll. Ronald
Feldman Fine Arts.

marked by the richness and variety of their ideas, which were extremely topical.
We enjoyed their inventiveness in creating a catalogue of Superobjects that
could possibly obliterate class distinctions, the hamburger from Pravda (prop-
aganda meat) or Biography, 1973, a multistylistic series of small paintings that
they reforged and copied in New York for their exhibition in 1985. “Famous art-
ists of the 1970s” reads the card fixed to their door. For a long time they
prepared for emigration and they always precisely programmed their politics
and art, calling their style sots-art playing with cosmopolitan terminology
(socialistic pop-art). At the same time they were so deeply involved in the

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Komar and Melamid, Passport from Trans State, Moscow, 1977. Photo by Eeva-
Inkeri, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts.

Komar and Melamid, Visit to the Museum of the Revolution, oil on canvas, 11" x 54";
183 cm x 137 cm, NY 1981-82. Photo by D. James Dee, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts.

Soviet world, so wrapped up in ironic, love-hate commentary upon it, that their
break with an environment so natural to them inevitably had a powerful effect
on their work and views. In 1978 these two political artists moved to the USA, a
country where politics is not by preference a major topic in art.

They have always been fascinated by the materialist basis needed to
achieve fame, either after the example set by Soviet artist Ilya Glazunov or the
skyrocket career of American Julian Schnabel. Seeing artistic talent as a
phenomenon is quite antagonistic to their casuistic approach.* Reverting to
their nostalgic, Soviet heritage, as if they were trained lawyers they have begun
to parody the models of Stalinist classical paintings, mixed with various popular
western styles. Their choice of eclecticism as an artistic medium provides them
with sufficient flexibility to follow any and every turn of fashion, especially now
that innovative approaches do not play so important a role. Komar and
Melamid’s exhibitions, devoted to Soviet subjects, have been successful, both

122

Eric Bulatov at his studio, Moscow, 1978. In tho background his painting M to! tome,
Moscow, 1973, oil on canvas. Photo by Igor Makarovich.

* Quotations from their interview in The New York Times, Jan. 29, 1984: “Malevich was an
idiot;’ “Pollock defaced museums with his art as graffiti artists defaced buildings.”

with critics and public They create a Soviet Disneyland geared just for the
American market. Nevertheless, the art of two sharp-eyed Russian artists looks
original compared to the other mannerists of contemporary postmodernism.

Komar and Melamid are artists of a particular context, closely linked to
time place and politics. However, as history shows, works of art are rated by their
extratemporal qualities, upon which also the archetypical links of human
culture are based. Their close friend and critic Jamey Gambrell writes of them:
“In their own specifically dialectical way they are a clarion call to possess and
understand history, rather than to repeat it, like so many unwitting
sheep They do not take cover in the frayed garments of modernism." *

In this context it is worthwhile to mention another realist painter who lives
in Moscow. Eric Bulatov (born 1933) started an extensive series of paintings with
Soviet imagery at the beginning of the seventies. His style has a classical quality
at the same level portraying strong ideological (never straightforward or satiric)
images of the Russian reality which he himself is a part of. Leading a rather
secluded life, Eric approaches life philosophically.

Once he wrote in his article: "When they say that in contemporary
America the dollar has devoured art, I always want to add that it devoured that
art which itself tried to devour the dollar. Any society devours art that places
itself in a common space with the society. It doesn't matter how this is done,
whether through the dollar or through ideology. Every society simply uses the
means at its disposal." * *

In recent years, samizdat performance documentation has circulated
in Moscow. The first works of this type were made by Lev Nussberg (born 1937),
organizer of the kinetic group Movement. Full of original drawings, collages and
texts, his book Zhiznj, Dvizheniye, Budushcheye (Life, Movement, Future, 1964)
has quite a seditious history. It illegally crossed the Soviet border four times,
back and forth, and was included in different exhibitions and publications in
the West. An energetic leader, Lev Nussberg kept his art brigade in full subor-
dination. In the sixties, with his group Movement, he staged several complex
kinetic environments with performances in Moscow, Leningrad and along the
Black Sea coast; the pieces include Metamorphosis, Transformations, Sea
Monsters and The Extraterrestrials, among others.

His futurologic projects, as he calls them, which are close to the ideas
of Russian Constructivists Pevsner and Gabo, were invisibly brought into har-
mony with official technological development. So all these big environmen-
tal projects of his were built with state money. Nussberg predicts that art will

"Vitaly Komar-Alexander Melamid," by Jamey Gambrell, A-Ya, #5, 1983
Eric Bulatov, “Malevich's Relationship of Space,” A-Ya, #5, 1983

ultimately create artificial environments, “visions from past to future,” that he has
been elaborating for more than 20 years.

In 1981, with Galina Goloveiko, he put together an unusual publication,
all 1 50 copies of which were handmade. This was From the Unpublished Let-
ters ofKS. Malevich (1878-1935) to LV. Nussberg (1937-1998), an imaginary cor-
respondence with Malevich together with drawings and projects. Later, with the
assistance of his wife Galina Goloveiko, he did another book-assemblage, Titjki
Rodiny Burliuka Davida (Tits of Burliuk David’s Motherland) based on a collec-

125

Lev Nussberg, Titjki Rodiny Burliuka Davida (Tits ef Burliuk David's Motherland],
Connecticut, 1982, 11V4" x 9"; 29 cm x 23 cm, drawings, collages, poems by David
Burliuk.

d Lev Nussberg, pages from his book Zh/zn/, Dvizhcniyc, Budushtheye (Life,
Movement, Future), Moscow, 1964, 8V' x 8V'J 21.5 cm x 21.5 cm, original drawings,
collages, texts.

tion of poems by the Russian Futurist David Burliuk, edited by Konstantin Kuz-
minsky. Despite the range of new printing technologies available in the West
where Nussberg has lived since 1976, he chose a traditional method ot samiz-
dat, affirming his continuing vital influence on Russian artists.

The Moscow Collective Actions Group (Andrei Monastyrsky, Nikita
Alekseyev, Nikolai Panitkov and Goga Kizevalter) also uses books for its perfor-
mances. In the winter of 1979 they organized a happening with Andrei
Abramov in which the audience laid out brightly colored pages on snowdrifts,
thus creating a vivid composition in a snow-covered field near Moscow. Each
spectator-participant took an original book away with him. For the international
exhibition entitled Other Child Book in Warsaw, Monastyrsky and Abramov pro-

126

Nikolai Panitkov, performance with plates dug up from the ground, Moscow, 1981.

Andrei Abramov, from the series Proekty Knig (Projects of Books), 1976, Moscow, ►
14% x J*V'; 36.5 cm x 51 cm, markers and water colors. Below: Andrei Abramov
at his studio, Moscow 1978. Photos by the Cerlovins.

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128

Andrei Abramov and Andrei Monastyrsky, Llthnaya i Nyeobyknovennaya Kniga
(Personal and Unusual Book), Moscow, 1978. Photo by the Gerlovlns.

duced a folder of sixteen sealed envelopes with the instructions “Open in the
first year," . in the second year," and so on, up to sixteen. As well as group
works, all the members publish their own independent book objects.

Andrei Abramov (born 1951) always works with series of drawings
collected in albums which often have literary implications, like “Solar Eclipse,”
“Echo” (1976), “Projects,” "Strange Circumstances" and “Yellow, Red, Blue”
(1977-79).* His text shows a morphological play like that of his favorite poet
Velimir Khlebnikov. The commentary is always interwoven with his colorful visual
compositions. Very asocial and impractical himself, Andrei is always deeply
involved with his own utopian dreams and monumental projects, that we doubt

* “Solnechnoye Zatmeniye," “Ekho,” “Proecty" “Strannyye Obstoyateljstva" and "Zheltyi,
Krasnyi, Goluboi.”

could even be finished partly because of his own nature. Once, before our
departure from Moscow, we showed his drawings to Ilya Kabakov, hoping that
he could help our friend. Strangely enough, the works evoked displeasure in
Ilya. Both artists had touched nearly the same spiritual subject with some
esthetic similarity, but from an opposite attitude in their work. Kabakov’s pieces
are deeply thought out, logical and conceptual. This contrasts with Abramov's
spontaneous feelings and pseudologic.

We met the poet Andrei Monastyrsky (born 1949, real name Sumnin) in
1969 when he wore a long white scarf like the symbolist poet Konstantin Bal-
mont and led an extremely active bohemian life. At the end of the sixties, he
began to write surrealistic poetry which he accompanied with his own squiggly,
jelly fish-like drawings, the cycle which he completed in Bezkonechnoye
Chteniye (Endless Reading), 1972. Originally, he intended to work on this book

Andrei Monastyrsky, near Moscow, 1981. Photo by Igor Makarevich.

for the rest of his life. A year later, his long form transformed into short poems
and linguistic experiments, which he developed into a series of graphic con-
ceptual books.

Andrei Monastyrsky liked to express his poetic feelings with his own
made-up esoteric words such as nedbennostj something between "im-
perishable” and “wakeful”. He styled himself Minister of Life. One popular enter-
tainment in our circle was a game called Burim&, which requires various poets
and artists to compose collective poetry. Each participant writes two lines after

Andrei Monastyrsky, Collected Visual Poems, Moscow, 1975. Photo by the
Cerlovins.

Pages from the assembling Voxdukhoplavaniye (Aeronautic), Moscow, 1973, 19" ►
x 14"; 48 cm x 30.5 cm. Cover by Valery Gerlovin, cardboard, tempera; Lev
Rubinshtein, assemblage; Andrei Monastyrsky, markers; Irina Gerlovina, woodcut
stamps; Nikita Alekseyev, water color.

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seeing only one previous line written by another. These evenings represented
a creative atmosphere typical for the time Documental conversation of similar
poetic games at artist Andrei Demykin’s kitchen was included in Rimma
Gerlovina’s visual novel S/e, 1972, typed under different color carbon paper.
After our departure, Andrei Monastyrsky inherited our whole collection of such
collaborative poems.

Later Andrei began to make objects designed to be manipulated by
spectators. Monastyrsky created Elementamaya Poeziya Nomer 9-Kucha
(Elementary Poetry No. 9-Heap), 1976, a work completed by the audience The
author, for his part, included instructions on how "to feed the pile” with different
objects, writing down the necessary data in an accompanying ledger.

In the middle of the seventies he organized Collective Actions Group
which usually did prolonged performances, with little to no events taking place,
in the open air outside Moscow. Spatial exoteric commentaries that explain
and are, in a sense, equal to these performances have become an important
genre in Monastyrsky’s work. As someone by nature artistic and convivial,
Monya (as his friends call him) is always ready to discuss anything under the
sun, his gifted language often as varied as the ideas underlying it. In our view,
he plays an important part in Moscow’s artistic world. His personal charm, gift
for communication, artistic curiosity and vivid talent enable him to form the
center of a definite artistic group.

Nikita Alekseyev's (born 1953) mythological hero changes throughout
his series of book albums, which contain texts and drawings. Many of his books
are marked by a rich vocabulary. There are interesting constructive book forms.
One, for example, is composed of a stack of pages half a meter thick, while
another, an illustrated history of a character imagined by the author, is written
on a thirty-meter-long roll of paper.

One can find similar patterns in the works of Natalia Abalakova (born
1941) and Anatoly Zhigalov (born 1941), a Moscow couple who always do
documentations of their performances and multiply their editions not on a
typewriter but by using photographic printing not only for images but also for
handwritten texts. In 1982 they made a huge and complicated book object
depicting their prolonged performances.

Elizaveta Mnatsakanova (born 1922) is a former music critic who at the
beginning of the seventies developed a polyphonic system of notation for her
piercingly female lyrics. Her elegant manuscript books with abstract pastel
drawings are, as a rule, produced in one copy only. Her highly charged, emo-

Above: spectators looking at a book of Nikita Alekseyev, 1978, Moscow. Photo by ►
the Gorlovins. Below: Anatoly Zhigalov, Prookty (Projects), Moscow, 1980, 814 x «\;

21. S cm x 16.5 cm, multiplied by photographic medium.

tional lyrics, written in a style current at the end of the sixties among many
young poets, have hardly changed. Mnatsakanova’s most valuable innovation
is the musical structure of her verse and the polyphonic echo of the poet’s
voice. Despite the visual dissimilarity between the written form of her poetry and
musical scores, when they are read we can sense space-time relationships akin
to notation.

As mentioned previously, the Russian psychological outlook has had a
big influence on all types of creativity. A sensitive attitude that includes the
emotional marks of suffering is discernible in the works of Moscow artist Igor
Makarevich (born 1943). He was a designer for several TV movies (The Tales of
Hoffman, Stories of Gogol) and books (a series of etchings on Kafka). All his
works have one and the same ultimate totality, horrifying freeze-framing. The
high quality and precision of his execution is another feature of his works.

It can be seen on his large oil canvas Death of the Communards, 1977,

Igor Makarevich, selfportrait at his studio, Moscow, 1978.

The Gerlovins and Igor Makarevich, Theory of Free Transformation of Functions,
Moscow, 1978; fabric support with labeled pockets for 54 photo-cards, 49" x 33";
125 cm x 84 cm. The reader is supposed to change the arrangement of these cards.
Box with the theory, 17'/«" x lift"; 44.5 cm x 57 cm.

a large-scale hyperrealistic copy of the famous photograph of 15 dead French
communards in their coffins, or his paintings of abortion instruments. His photo
series Changes (1978) is self-analytic research into his own face and body
which gradually disappear under a gypsum mask. As he comments in his
Stratigraphic Structures, Moscow, 1977: ‘Joining the initial and terminal elements
humanizes the passion and calls for estrangement devoid of any exter-
nal attractiveness of perspective on deromanticized reality.”

Igor Makarevich, 2 page* from his accordion book Vybor I Sell (Choice of Aim), ►
Moscow, 1976, 13V4" x 9%"; 34.5 cm x 24 cm. Moving figures correspond to the
moving dice. Photographs taken during the unofficial exhibition show the following
artists in the left hand photo (from left to right); Valery Gerlovin, Sergei Shablavin,
Rimma Cerlovina, Igor Shelkovsky, Alexander Yulikov, Leonid Sokov, Ivan Chuikov.

His fold-out book Vybor Tseli (Choice of Aim, 1976) is a series of photo-
mutations of a fortune-telling bone contrasted with changes in a group
photograph of Moscow artists. In 1 979 this book was exhibited in the video sec-
tion at the Pompidou Center, because of the hidden relationships of its mov-
ing elements. During our last years in Moscow, Igor Makarevich and his wife, the
sculptor Elena Yelagina, were our closest friends. We always valued Igor's ex-

Igor Makarevich, Lalai, slow-speed photo series, Pogorelovo, 1981.

treme peceptiveness, altruism and keen insight, despite his changeless
apocalyptic conclusions. Once he said that for him creativity is a search for
truth and that an artist’s main purpose is to approximate sincerity to the max-
imum, when artistry is connected to morality.

Together we did several book objects: Trees, or How to Photograph
Dreams and Theory of Transformations of Functions (1977), based on his

photography. Our environmental piece "Wedding Party” includes his
photography as well, and shows the social structure of a Russian wedding with
keen observation and black humor.

In 1981 Igor Makarevich did a slow-speed photo action: every partici-
pant wrote a letter by flashlight in a country field at night. Altogether, they pro-
duced different words like Lalai (name of an old man who had recently passed

Anatol Ur, Bookshelf Theater, NY, 1981, handwritten text on paper, assemblage,
12" x 14" x 9"; 30.5 cm x 35.5 cm x 23 cm.

away in the nearest village), da (Yes) and aktsiya (action).

We encounter a completely opposite aggresive sensibility in the works
of another artist who now lives in New York. Anatol Ur works rather obsessively
with his face, putting it on every one of his paper sculptures. A Book for Cutting
Up and Tearing Apart, 1982, which comes complete with scissors and ap-
propriate authorial commentary is placed at the audience's disposal and

testifies to the author’s subconscious desire for destruction.

Such compositions by Ur represent a kind of bookshelf theater-an inter-
mediate genre between the book and theatrical set design. For example,
a model stuck together from copies of Pravda and The New York Times includes
a paper mannequin with the face of the author, sitting amid a pile of books
and newspapers; he looks sadly bureaucratic.

Michael Chernyshov (born 1945) carries on the formal traditions of the
Russian Avant-Garde in graphics, paintings and books. In 1962 he put together
his first exhibition “Red Truck” in the apartment of another Moscow artist Michael
Roginsky, the first Russian pop artist, who worked with Soviet imagery, like his
painting Wall in Militsia or the ready-made Red Door, ( 1 964-65). Chernyshov’s
early graphic series of fighter planes dominated his later book works. His large
compositions consisted of drawings joined together with medical bandages.
All these pieces folded into numerous school file folders.

At an early age Michael Chernyshov was quite well informed about con-

Michael Chernyshov, Aviatsionnye Opoznavatdjnyc Znaki (Aviation Identification
Signs), NY, 1981, diameter 7V>"; 19 cm, original drawings.

Ivan Chuikov, Moscow, 1978. Photo by the Gerlovins.

temporary Western art, spending hours in the Library of Foreign Literature. Now
he leads a very secluded life in Jersey City, where he has lived since 1981. His
view of the mythic image of American culture is somewhat tarnished, but his
personal artistic language and high productivity remain unchanged.

Aviatsionnye Opoznavateljnye Znaki (Aviation Identification Signs, 1981),
is a book of his in the form of a circle, that displays a precise and constructivist
correlation of lines and dots. Subtle graphic devices in combination with tinted
paper in Mitsubishi-Kawasaki-Nakayama are characterstic features of Cher-
nyshov’s work. Using ideological symbols like stars or swastikas, he insists: "For
me the formal game is the foundation of art, and only in the function of the form
do I see the sense of production.” * Such a purely formalistic view is quite
strange for the Russian School.

Ivan Chuikov (1935) investigates the problems of illusions and echoes
in different media: in panoramic landscapes on big parallelepipeds, false win-

145

• "Michael Chernyshov”, A-Ya, #6, 1984, p. 7

146

Ivan Chuikov, page from his book Zerkala (Mirrors), Moscow, 1977, 11" x 13V'; 28
cm x 34 cm. This folded book was done for the Other Child Book exhibition in
Warsaw, Poland.

dows with enamel paintings on them, or photo series of delusive mirrors. His
book Virtualyny Project (Virtual Project, 1977) is a similar exercise in the eter-
nal concave and convex corners of houses, shown in false perspective. It con-
tains many drawings and the author’s theory.

Evgeny Kharitonov (1941-1981), a producer ana poet, is famous for his
candid gay novels, written like visual poetry. He organized (although he never
took part in) the musical performance group Last Chance. They not only wrote
their own songs, but used poems by Daniil Kharms and Genrikh Sapgir in their
buffoon performances which are permeated with sad humor. We saw them first
in our own apartment, where they gave a spontaneous concert, simply
because they liked our work. The noisy event evoked a desperate protest by

our middle-class neighbors. For a while, they performed officially for Barricade,
a movie theater for children. Art for children, in theory, serves as a regular shelter
for many artists and poets.

Before leaving Russia, we had a long discussion with Evgeny Kharitonov
about the painful problem of leaving or staying, that was nagging artists and
the intelligentsia. In our opinion his talented and sensitive writing could develop
better in the West, because in Russia homosexuality is strictly forbidden. He
answered, “I was born in this country, and we have to suffer together." He died
in 1981 of a heart attack on a Moscow street. His group Last Chance chang-
ed slightly and took another name, Football.

The collaboration by the young conceptual artists Victor Skersis, Michael
Roshal and Gennady Donskoi was called Gnezdo (Nest), after their perfor-
mance where they hatched eggs. They did many projects and objects with text
usually with political significance. Later Victor Skersis cooperated with an
other artist, Vadim Zakharov, in a new group CZ. Since 1984, he has lived in
Philadelphia.

The young prose writer Vladimir Sorokin (1955) usually makes his own
drawings for his taboo novels. At the same time, he works as a book designer
for an official publishing house.

Our old friend the artist Vitaly Gribkov, a connoisseur of the new, sent the
Mukhomory (Fly-agarics), a group of artists to see us. The Fly-agarics are: Sven
Gundlakh, Sergei and Vladimir Mironenko, Konstantin Zvezdochetov and Alexei
Kamensky.* They belong to the young generation of Moscow artists, all of
whom were born at the end of the 1950s.

That very same night on the walls of our Moscow hallway we saw scrib-
bled pictures resembling those that crowd the New York subway. The Fly-agarics
behaved like a boisterous crowd of recruits bursting into a bath house. Out of
a suitcase they removed a stack of crooked and lopsided books, some cut in
pieces, bitten through, and folded into paper dolls. There were also sawed-off
metal squares, notebooks folded into small sections, photo albums, labels,
signboards, manifestoes and a pile of accidental things. It was clear that they
were capable of coming the next day with another such suitcase full of books
that they had constructed within a few hours.

The style of their work is close to that of agit-prop performances. We think

* See our article about them “Mukhomory" (Toadstools), A-Ya *3, pp. 10-13

Group Mukhomory (Fly-agarics), series of folded books, Moscow, 1979. Photo by the
Gerlovins.

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that the Fly-agarics’ book work is their most successful and expressive because
this medium gives them the opportunity to manifest their lightning-quick ideas
very swiftly. As a rule they make their book-objects in one edition, and many
of their pseudomythological tales are written by hand with a brush or marker.

The strength of the Fly-agarics’ work lies in their abundant creative
energy and spontaneity. That their energy frequently exceeds their ideas is
characteristic of the Russian temperament, particularly in the avant-garde
period. The actual event is not as important to the Fly-agarics as the con-
tinuously active environment.

In 1975 the artist V.G. began to put out a regular handmade journal as
an art object called Metki (Marks) with a circulation between five and ten

Croup Mukhomory (Fly-agarics), from left fo right: Vladimir Mironenko, Sven
Cundlakh, Sergei Mironenko, Moscow, 1979. Photo by the Gerlovins.

copies. The contents included critical articles, interviews with artists, informa-
tion on Western art, poetry and music, many photographs, original drawings
and manuscript poems. In 1976, we collected material for a new magazine
and prepared a complete mock-up. However, we decided that publishing it
would require too much time, so we handed over the entire project, with eight
copies in typescript, to VG. who made it the third edition of Marks. This issue in-
cluded interviews with artists Yuri Sobolev and Komar and Melamid, a collec-
tion of stills from a movie by Alex Kiselyov, visual poems by Vsevolod Nekrasov,
a theoretical article and photographs of ours, and a manifesto by composer
V. Artyomov’s musical group.

A similar magazine was published by various poets and artists at the
same time in Leningrad. Titled 37 (an apartment number), it contained critical
and journalistic articles. Of course, there were many handmade assemblings
of poetry, prose and criticism, but usually they were done as simple typewrit-
ten books in multiple.

Michael Grobman, who now lives in Israel, used to publish a Russian
newspaper on art called Leviafan (Leviathan, 1975), all of whose texts are
handwritten.

Former Leningrad artist Michael Chemyakin published his Apollon, a col-
lection of poetry and art, in Paris in 1977. This expensive volume was typeset on
a regular typewriter. Another Paris publication with handmade elements (in-
cluding original drawings by artists) was put together by Tolsty in 1984. His
almanac Muleta, called "a family album,” is a mixture of poetry, literature, in-
formation about art, and domestic chit-chat.

In Moscow in 1 979 he made a folded book Tolsty. Protopolovizm Art (pro-
topolovizm is a neologism which means “arch"/“sex”). The book is designed by
Felix Elinbaum, and the photographer is Boris Neiman. The book includes texts
and photographs of performances by Tolsty (pseudonym of Vladimir Kotliarov)
that he did naked in winter in an open field near Moscow. The book was done in
1 8 copies, all signed, and sent as presents to people in different parts of the world.

In New York in 1981, together with Vagrich Bakhchanyan, we began to
produce a handmade international journal called Collective Farm (one hun-
dred copies per issue), consisting of envelopes bound into a book, each of
which forms a kind of mini-gallery for the contributing artist. The journal makes
use of the monoprint method with the aid of Russian color carbon paper, Xerox
copies, original drawings, prints and collages. The first issue (‘Kolkhoz"),
prepared by an expanded editorial force, consisted solely of works by Russian
artists; all subsequent issues-No. 2, “Letters to the USSR,” No. 3, “Post Office Din-
ner,” and No. 4, "Wonderkids-were international in character. In the last issue,
works by Miro, Picasso, Dubuffet, Twombly and others, who were influenced by
children’s art, appeared as elements in original drawings by children of con-
temporary artists. The idea of the design came to us when we found a huge

152

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container of envelopes across from our garage-loft on Spring Street. Now the
journal figures in many artist-book collections including the Museum of Modern
Art's as a rare edition.

It is worthwhile to point out that the Moscow and Leningrad schools of
samizdat each use a different formal language. Figuratively speaking, Len-
ingrad continues the traditions of the Russian symbolists from the beginning of
the century. As many Leningrad artists will admit, they tried to avoid social com-
ment and concentrate instead on estheticism, more than the Moscow school
does. Leningrad samizdat art is much closer to regular self-published literature
and poetry.

A book by two Leningrad artists William Brui and Gregory Kapelyan, Ex
Adverso (1969), was done in nine copies. Both text and drawings were printed

COUICTIW

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Collettive farm magazine, NY, 1981-85, ed.100, edited by Vagrich Bakhchanyan
and the Gerlovins, #1,2,3, 4.

■4 Michael Grobman, newspaper Leviafan (Leviathan), #1, 13'/«" x 9 Vi"; 34 cm x 24 cm.

154

from etched metal plates. Its constructive composition consisted of black and
white images and a repeating red frame around the text, which could be read
from either left or right. Ten years later, it was reprinted in facsimile in Paris in two
languages (Russian and French) in an edition of lOO copies and exhibited in
many international bookfairs including the one at the Pompidou Center.

Probably the most intriguing figures are the poets Alexey Khvostenko and
Konstantin Kuzminsky, who zealously publicize artists and poets from the former
Russian capital, which they all still call St. Petersburg.

Alexey Khvostenko (born 1940) made many original books containing
his visual poetry, that included a lot of collages from chance pieces of paper
like tickets or ripped advertisements. His handwritten typography includes not
only strange cryptography, but also drawings, mathematical and literal col-
lages, mixed with his profoundly elaborated formal language. Of particular in-
terest is his book Podozritelj (Suspector, 1965). His original book Institut Verpy

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Alexei Khvestenke, page from his book Menw (Menu), Leningrad, 1964, original
drawings and collages. Reprinted from an anthology of modern Russian poetry The
Blue Lagoon (in Russian), edited by K. Kuxminsky and C. Kovalev, Oriental Research
Partners, Newtonville, Mass., 1980.

(Institute of Verpa, 1965), contains many handwritten texts, collages and
transfers. The word Verpa like Dada is invented for Khvostenko’s new muse.

Konstantin Kuzminsky (born 1940), was involved in samizdat publishing
in the early seventies. He did his first book assemblage Kitoboj (Whale Hunter,
1972), which he replicated in the States in 1980. His language, as well as his col-
lages, displays a colorful, eccentric style, but not as extravagant as his per-
sonality. He likes to appear naked at public events talking non-stop about the
high estate of poetry. He enjoys memorizing all random incidents, facts and
names.

In Leningrad in the seventies Kuzminsky used to arrange underground
group exhibitions in his apartment, where he also showed his poetry of objects
like Nemoy Chemodan (Dumb Suitcase, 1974) or Perya ne v tu Storonu
(feathers to the Wrong Side, 1974). Now living in Brooklyn, he has opened Podval
(Basement), a gallery and emigre club, where he continues to show Russian
art and handmade books not only of his own but also his friends’.

In Leningrad there were many examples of poet and artist collabora-
tions, such as Michael Chemiakin who illustrated the poems of Roald

At the unofficial show in the Konstantin Kuzminsky's apartment, 1974, Leningrad.
In the middle: Konstantin Kuzminsky and his wife Emma Podberyozkina.

Mandelshtam. Poet Anry Volokhonsky worked with artist Evgeny Mikhnov-
Voitenko and later with Putov; Igor Zakharov-Ross illustrated Vladlen Gavriljchik’s
books. Valentin Levitin used to write his friends’ texts on his etchings. Special
mention should be made of poets like Ilya Bokshtein, Leonid Gubanov, Nikolai
Bokov, V. Kovshin, Elena Shchapova; as well as Estonian artists like Tynis Vint, Raul
Meel, Leo Lapin, and many others.

In the Ural Mountain town of Sverdlovsk in the sixties, there was a group
of teenage poets and artists strongly influenced by the ideas of Russian
Futurism. They even called themselves Anarfuts ( Anarcho-Futurists) or the Uktuss
group (after the Uktuss Mountain near their town). The artists were Sergey Sigei
(born 1947), Ry Nikonova, A. Galamaga, E. Arbenev, V. Dyachenko. They
assembled a handmade magazine Nomer (Number), which contained
poetry, manifestoes and criticism. In 1974 S. Sigei and Ry Nikonova moved to
Elsk, a town near the Azov Sea. There they continued their work, which can be
briefly described as the transplanted language of such Russian Futurist poets
as V. Khlebnikov, I. Zdanevich and A. Kruchenykh, mixed with performance.

In 1979, the Leningrad poet Boris Konstrictor joined them, changing his
style from traditional Acmeism to visual conceptual poetry. Together they wrote
several manifestoes and arranged a series of poetic performances and
shows of their painted poems in several Leningrad clubs. Ry Nikonova and
S. Sigei used a medium to write their poems on different printed texts,
photographs and slides. Both have quite an eyecatching tendency to write
manifestoes for any occasion. For example, they composed Culinart Manifesto
in 1 983 for poetic performances with food; they wrote words like “Literary Spice’’
with fruit preserves on a plate; the poem was destined to be eaten. They com-
posed another manifesto called Irfaerism, together with D. Prigov, in 1983; the
title plays on “euphoria,” “affair," "fair,” “air,” etc., .and suggests ready-made
poetry.

All over the country, hundreds of poets and artists designed and made
by hand their textual works. We hope that any poet and artist involved in samiz-
dat will pardon us, if we fail to mention them here. We tried to discuss works that
are closer in form to book objects rather than typical poetry manuscripts.

After analyzing works by our comrades-in-arms, we would now like to pre-
sent our own point of view and discuss our contributions to samizdat. To
describe our pieces, we will write in the third person.

Rimma Gerlovina’s * (born 1951) first books (1972-73) took the form of
pattern novels typed under different color carbon-paper and bound often with
unusual multifolding (S/e, Lamark, Po Vetru, Plodoslov). Valery always did the

• The ending -a for Gerlovina designates the female name in Russian (for example, Anna
Karenina).

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Rimma Cerlovina, series of works, photographed on the street, N.Y., 1985.

covers and page design with carbon-paper monoprints. A series of scores for
polyphonic readings (1973-74) already implied the idea of group recitation,
like opera. All these books were produced in four to seven copies from basic
materials like wall paper ( Plays for Polyphonic Reading, Reflection on Sister Ira,
Singing Bird for Ira ).* Their mood of desirable eternal tranquility was in part
caused by the premature death of Valery’s younger sister, the talented poet
Irina Gerlovina, who was killed at age 19 in a truck accident at a collective farm
where students work in the fall. Rimma's book-score Chetyre Prelyudii k
Rozhdeniyu (Four Preludes for Birth) is dedicated to Irina and written in five Slavic
languages. This poem was performed and recorded in 1974. The soundtrack
and visual patterns show the panslavic echoes of the ancient unity of its five
different languages.

* Pjecy Dlya Poliphonicheskogo Chteniya, Razmyshleniye O Sesre Irye, Peniye Ptitsy
Dlya try

4 Sergei Sigei, page from his book Sobukvy Radi Yatj (For co-letter Yatj Sake), Elsk,
1977, woodcut.

Rimma Gerlovina, above: Plodoslov (Fruitword), 6V' x *%"; 15.7 cm x 23.3 cm, ed.4. ►
Below: Pyesy dlya Mnogogoloznogo thtenlya (Pieces for Polyphonic Reading),
Moscow, 1*73, ed.4, 37 pp. 7" x 10"; 18 cm x 35.5 cm, wallpaper; every poem is
folded separately in a binding. Po Vetru (Down the Wind), Moscow, 1*72, ed.4, 9X"
x 6 ’/a"; 25 cm x 16.5 cm, carbon paper monoprints by Valery Gerlovin.

tjnufF

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union

Rimma Gerlovina with her works, Moscow, 1976.

On the following pages: Rimma Gerlovina, cube-poems, Moscow, 1974, 3V'; 8 cm on
each face, cardboard. Photographs by Victor Novatsky. On the left above:
Perethnyi Clement (A Depraved Element) completes the perfect cubic form; below:
Kub v Forme Tetraedra (Cube in the Shape of a Tetrahedron). On the right above:
poem tm-Zhe (Male-Female), the convex M-cubes can be rearranged in different
positions with the concave F-cubes. Below: Zhiznj Grazhdanina (Life of a Citizen)
consists of two parts: a citizen goes up and down.

A cube in
the form of
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Rimma began her series of cube-poems in 1973. Each cube is an
allegorical unit of time, space or human character and is a sort of a simple
universal form of samizdat, that enveloped different aspects of Russian life. Let
us quote some comments by our old friends Komar and Melamid:

Her work consists of cardboard cubes which are covered with cloth and
open on one side. Some of the cubes, large and small, bear labels
describing their particular qualities, either from the author’s or the cube’s
point of view.

For example: "This cube is 5 centimeters closer to the Moon than
this one’-they speak in ambiguities. Box: "There’s a sphere inside me." The
inside of the cube: “He’s a sphere, I’m a cube." Box: “You think.” Small cube
inside: “But I am.” This is not a dialogue, but a monologue in which the in-
side plays the role of an inner voice. Here we are face to face with the
dichotomy of Homo-Box's consciousness. The only woman in contem-
porary Russian Modernism exhibits a profound inventiveness in design-
ing a wardrobe for her soul.*

A paradoxical simplicity in combination with an analytical approach,
lyrical irony and fatalism organizes, so to speak, the semiotic environments of
utopia. The characters of all these homocubes are shown symbolically as they
would be in an anatomy theater: not nude, but naked. Her easily executed
cube poems were soon found in the collections of many Moscow artists and
poets who got them through art trades. They became popular as a new sym-
bolic language of the seventies, on the border between poetry and art. Once,
an old friend, a Bulgarian movie director (whose name we omit because of his
high official position today), asked us about some enigmatic blocks, which
were described to him by his Russian colleague Marlen Khutsiyev. Suddenly he
burst out laughing; sitting in the middle of our studio, he understood the com-
edy of the situation. This incident also shows the relationship between the unof-
ficial and official cultures.

At present the molecular cubic structure has been arranged into large
cube poems. A two-meter-high man made of cubes with inscriptions covering
single concepts (from genius to lack of talent, or from saint to devil, and so on)
is formed by the viewer himself, who at that moment is, in a sense, writing his
own random poetry. This series also includes a Calendar for a lOO Years in the
form of a dog sphinx, which the viewer uses to predict the future by means of
movable cubes. The Wandering Jew is a soft cube that wanders across a world
map shaped as a prostrate human figure. A special hero, the transvestite, with
interchangeable sex symbols, appears in many different cubic sculptures. In
her cubes poems, Rimma developed her theory of Transfism with the following

Komar and Melamid, "The Barren Flowers of Evil", Art Forum, March 1980, p. 51

Rimma Gerlovina, Cubit Organisms, plywood constructions, covered wtih fabric and
filled with soft cubes, acrylic. From left to right: Calender-Dog for Next 100 Years
with six prophecies for each year on each cube, 68" x 59" x 4"; 173 cm x 150 cm x
10 cm, NY, 1982. Man of Babel in six languages, NY, 1983. Installation viewed from
Citicorp Center, Saint Peter's Church, 1984. Photo by Francis Hauert.

theses:

1 . Interchangeability (of time, space, sex, etc., as a basic principle of life, and
the unity of opposites)

2 . Co-creativity and Pluralism (of the spectator, who completes the idea,
changing the elements in the frames of the author's form)

3 . Metaphoric Game (as a symbolic modeling of the world, as an a priori part
of human nature)

4 . Archetypal Units (cubes together make a perfect unity)

Since 1972 we often worked in tandem. We issued several plexiglass-
bound books in shapes like a tortoise or a heart, with Rimma’s transrational
poetry typed on Valery’s monoprints. Zerkaljnaya Igra (The Mirror Game, 1977)

Valery Gerlovin at his studio, Moscow, 1976. Photo by Victor Novatsky.

is a book object that tells the actual story of our performances, while all our uto-
168 pian projects have recently been collected in Isbrannoye (Selected Works),

NY, 1984.

Objects from meccano and bread were the most characteristic pieces
I of Valery Gerlovin’s (born 1945) Moscow period. This medium arbitrarily

expressed the coexistence of natural and artificial substances. For example,
in 1974 he fashioned a series of meccano sculptures called “Spermatozoid,”
“leaf,’’ “Madonna with Baby” and “Party Meeting.” In 1976 Valery buried some
of them in the ground, as a symbolic anticipation of the end of any culture, in-
cluding ours, which sooner or later returns to the earth. Valery’s multimedia pro-
ject Bread Insects Community, born and fed on the bread trees, was a
mystification of the life of organisms modeled from real black bread.

The Gerlovins, Serdtse (Hear!), Moscow, 1973, ed.3, 10 pp., 6" x 6"; 15 cm x 15 cm. ►
Plastic cover with a color carbon paper print.

In his New York period, Valery started to combine his very early painting
media with later creations of the meccano world. Altogether, these works
metamorphosed into the syringe mosaics. Valery’s monumental reliefs, frescos,
paintings and sculptures show exaggerated fragments of faces with eyes or
hair done as syringe mosaics that create the illusion of permanence. The face
is an archetypal symbol in any culture. Valery’s iconographic faces recall
monumental mosaic portraits from Byzantium and Rome, two decaying cultures
with qualities similar to today’s superpowers, Russia (the Third Rome) and
America (the New Babylon). At the same time, they are reminiscent of the

Valery Gerlovin, Chess Game, Moscow, 1977. Figures from black and white bread
for the match-performance between Renate Bertlmann (Austria) and Rimma
Gerlovina. Photo by Reinhold Bertlmann.

totalitarian style of mosaics found in subways and state buildings in the USSR.
In New York, his syringe art is charged with an anarchic controversial sugges-
tion of banned drugs, modern-day forbidden fruits which may be seen as
both an attempt at self-affirmation outside society and as a means of
self-destruction.

Once, for an exhibition in New York on Pier 34, which had been con-
demned for demolition, Valery did his staircase face as an encaustic Egyptian
portrait that accompanies the dead to the grave. But, due to the possessive-
ness of capitalist society, this extremely heavy piece of art was stolen before
the demolition. Valery’s staircase figures were split up by the steps, while his
frescoes with shrill eyes on huge brick walls gather together in one modern tem-
ple in the large space of a former mattress factory, now a gallery with the same
name in Pittsburgh (1984). Rimma directed a video of this fresco series, which
is based on the preposterous correlation of the live and canonized face. The
multimedia Ancient New York Mosaics is another chapter in the photography
album that we both constantly work on together with our friend, the photo-
grapher Francis Hauert.

In summary, we wish to emphasize that in Russia human dignity is
routinely interfered with by the whole society itself, in contrast with life in the West.
Therefore, we view samizdat art as a new social phenomenon and simultan-
eously as an antidote to totalitarianism with a universal creative strategy and
application. The genre of artist’s book as a convenient flexible language in-
fluenced Russian art in many dimensions: from Andrei Monastyrsky’s piles of
found objects that work as a poetic palette, to Mukhomory's colorful paper
objects; from Komar and Melamid's average sizing of all Soviet documents, to
Rimma Gerlovina’s cube poems that form new book shelves.

The multimedia approach brings out new flavors in works beyond
graphic linguistic or structural categories with “a purpose all these artists share:
to invite the viewer to open his mind, to examine his prejudices, to uncover new
ideas and concepts, and to reflect upon the ironies of the condition of modern
man.” *

Looking at the art of the younger Moscow generation, sometimes we
recognize our own patterns of perception, which are especially typical for our

* Norton Dodge and Alison Hilton, New Art from the Soviet Union, Acropolis Books,
Washington, 1977, p. 48

Valery Gerlovin, Ancient MY Mosaics, exhibition at Mattress Factory Gallery, t
Pittsburgh, 1984. Frescoes, syringe mosaics, wood. Also, installation, Moscow
Streets at Hal Bromm Gallery, NY, 1985.

171

—

UBH- J i

[ J

series of utopian objects and projects. As long ago as 1977 in an article* * we
suggested a prognosis for the prevalent ideas of new artists, that is now com-
ing to pass. The absurd-philosophical approach, ironic play of thoughts in re-
cent group apartment exhibitions, dominated the sterile language of romantic
conceptualism or satirical art. The opinion of the younger generation could be
used as an illustration of this idea. Sven Gundlakh, a member of Mukhomory,
described the eighties as a period when artists got rid of the “publicist
language”, that “ultimately exploited, in trivialities, the methods of Sots Art.” At
the same time his generation “buried an extremely complicated, verbose
presentation. In other words, attention became focused on the work itself, which
was simpler, more emotional, and, with the abolition of commentary, more
paradoxical.”* *

Samizdat is an archetypal example of the vitality of art in a repressive
situation. Possessing an ambiguous language and existing between the lines,
as it were, it interprets the different problems of contemporary Russian life. Ex-
ported from Russia, Sots Art (named after Pop Art) is based on antisoviet sar-
donic devices; it later became an emigrant phenomenon because of it's
caricatural political denotation. A sculpture by an emigrant artist of Brezhnev
wearing a state emblem as well as a pop-up penis is something designed
merely to entertain an American sensibility. An artist in Russia would be taking
a great risk to show such a sculpture, but more importantly such a blatant work
would not be appreciated in the more complex subtle environment of Soviet
Russia. For example, the Moscow artist Vyacheslav Sysoyev has already been
in prison for two years because of his political drawings, which he included in
several albums and books.

We will now say something about Russian artists’ political language,
which is subtle and deep. It is usually juxtaposed to the eye-catching official
art. Sometimes, American critics find it difficult to interpret this language that
comes from national traditions and symbolic images, and that is dictated by
the social atmosphere. The work of art becomes valuable if, beside its
political statement, it has an imaginative philosophical background: in a
word, art.

Especially in the countries of Eastern Europe the language of art has this

* It appeared in print as “Rimma and Valery Gerlovin”, A-Ya, #1, 1979, pp. 16-20

* * Sven Gundlakh, “Aptart (Pictures from an Exhibition),” A-Ya, #5, 1983

Vyacheslav Sysoyev, Nech (Night), Moscow, 1984, 52 pp., 4%" x 6V1"; 12 cm x 16.5 ►
cm. Reprinted from A-Ya (Literature issue #1), 1985.

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ambiguous flavor, that sometimes makes art more permanent. Perhaps the
sense of our explanation can be expressed best in this passage from Keats'
“Hyperion”:

For to bear all naked truth,

And to envisage circumstance,
all calm

That is the top of
sovereignty.

BEAR (NO) RESEMBLANCE

After tedious Vienna the frenetic activity at New York Kennedy Airport reminded
us of our native land. Our first evening in America was spent at the Murray Hill
Hotel in a room with a big color TV set secured with an ancient anchor-sized
chain. Accustomed only to seeing New York on postcards from a bird’s eye view,
we literally came upon the Empire State Building: its dusty limestone wall was
about ten yards from our hotel window. The only artists we knew in New York,
Komar and Melamid, met us with a joke-, in America people are buried stan-
ding up, because land is so expensive.

Luckily, our first week coincided with the visit of Mirella Bentivoglio, an
Italian artist and one of the organizers of the Venice Biennial. She gave us our
first introduction not only to the town, but also to Jean Brown, collector of Fluxus
and Dada, who has been our good friend through all these years. Sometimes
the very first impressions remain truest and most memorable. Since this time we
have met hundreds of people, but, as usually happens in New York, all these
smiling faces appeared easily and later melted away even quicker without a
trace. In New York 1 980 was the last year for the Avant-Garde Festival and the
beginning of New Wave and the regeneration of commercialism that dis-
lodged the non-profit mentality, at least for a while.

Born in a vast, strategically important country, we could choose to live
only in a country of similar extremes. In Moscow American art used to look the
most intriguing: young, international and full of energy. It was clear that we
could only go to this country, that Pravda criticized most. Once, the surrealist
artist Dorothea Tanning, the wife of Max Ernst, told us that "New York was like a
shot in the arm for European artists and intellectuals in the beginning of the for-
ties, too. It worked both ways. But for some surrealists like Breton, it. was a tem-
porary prison.” In contrast to the Europeans, Russian emigres in our time can-
not either return to or even visit their country.

The art world was designated by Marx as a superstructure based on
ideology; nevertheless, this spiritual superstructure has had a more indepen-

dent and longer lasting life than all transient regimes. Now in an era where ide-
ology has replaced myth as a life concept, America and Russia despite their
different make-up have become the best examples of mass consciousness.
Their varied outlooks create different esthetics: the Russian is based on ideol-
ogy; the American on financial hegemony.

Side by side with advanced armament and political power, both
societies display a great deal of atavism. Russia revels in dictatorship and an
impoverished material existence, while the USA enjoys such undemocratic
elements as poor social medicine and overpriced jurisprudence, and an
underdeveloped intellectual tradition.

One of the most significant problems in the structure of any society is
censorship, which is inculcated in childhood. The Soviet concept is to forbid the
public appearance of independent individual creativity, unless it can be de-
fined as Socialist Realism. Wearing a horrible optimistic smile, this abstruse
pseudoacademic school serves the purposes of propaganda in its own way.
That is why the best art work remains underground and constantly corrodes the
official school, which is slowly becoming more flexible.

In the USA everything is censored by the marketplace that permits
nothing other than to “epater le bourgeois," but at the same time it offers in-
comparably more opportunities than in Russia. Accepted as a commodity, art
must pass through the censorship of today’s supermarket, which according to
Leo Castelli (one of its creators) replaced the grocery store. Though many
American artists are not satisfied with the concept of art as a merchandizable
item, that unhappiness has not produced an antipode. Consequently, many
years ago, Marcel Duchamp expressed his opinion that real art has to be
underground.

Dimitry Shostakovich, when visiting the USA, was once asked whether
Russian composers can write experimental music He answered: “Yes, you can
write whatever you want, but you cannot perform it.” The American composer
Otto Luening remarked that for his part "you can perform it here all right, but
it makes no difference.” *

The freedoms promised in the Soviet Constitution are far more numerous
than those experienced in real life, yet for the average citizen in the USA, de-
cent freedom starts at $100,000 a year, as an American passenger sug-
gested to a friend of ours, an emigre artist and taxi driver. This is obviously a
metaphorical exaggeration, as American personal freedom of choice can
hardly be compared to that within Russia. Nevertheless, the word "freedom”
has started to lose its real semantic sense in both languages: Compare Rus-

* This story was told to us by the American composer Bill Hellerman

sian “freedom of election” with the American maxi-pad "New Freedom.”

Here we come to the most important question for an artist: what role
does art play in society? In Russia literature and art have always had a nour-
ishing power to influence human minds. The hungry market in Russia easily ab-
sorbs an average book of poems printed in a run of 1 00,000 copies. Recent-
ly, the selected works of poet Alexander Tvardovsky were published in one
million copies. How many books of Allen Ginsberg’s were printed to saturate the
American market? American novelist Bel Kaufman, who recently visited Russia
wrote: “Russians are great readers . . . I wonder if, offered our television shows,
Russians would still read books and recite their beloved poets? I think they
would.” * The official readings by Evtushenko, Voznesensky, Akhmadulina or

* TV Guide, Aug. 31, 1985 #1692, p. 7

Sammy let me smash

Basil's nose
OR

Basic Russian: a history OF THE
COLD WAR

CAViAR BORSCHT SAMOVAR
SPUTNiK VODKA
BORiS AND NATASHA

KGB SAMiZDAT

KOSHER BLiNTZ
STOLiCHNAYA
SOLZHENITSYN

GULAG
SALT

NiET
NiET

I BUY I PAY
bASik INGLISh
OR

What the RUSKYS learn first

EN AMERIKA

To inhabitants of Tolatoy fara

MUNEY ORDER KAR AKSiDENT
LOiER iNSHURENS SiK
iKSPENSi V GARBADGE
SOSHiAL SiKURiTY

A DWERT tSMENT-UPPOi NTMENT * UNMPLOi MEAT

BiZNES SALARi SAViN MUNEY
PABLiSiTY PROSPERiTi

NEWSPAPER gAS

TI-VI FOLKSVAGEN
GRINKARTA SITIZENSHIP

W E L L F A I R

DO SVIDANIA

NTERART-PUBHC

E PR E SS / SPONSOR E 0 BY THE CITY OF A US T I N / PO E T R Y

0 BY KONSTANTIN K. KUZMINSKY 4 "Zhld,

1 » 1 Bl

Konstantin Kuzminsky Bath Russian, poster, Austin, TX, 1979.

other well-known poets in huge stadiums still attract as many people as con-
certs by rock superstars here.

As Osip Mandelstam said in the thirties: "Poetry is loved in Russia; for

Anatel Ur, Paper Man, NY, 1984, 77" x 75" x 3", 196 cm x 190 cm x 8 cm, assemblage.

poetry people get killed." The power of the language of poetry and art stirs up
the troops of severe censorship. That is why even quite innocent abstract art,
which is completely apolitical, does not escape the authorities’ attention. One
small misstep can entail serious consequences and new demands. In spite of
such pressure, art has not been converted into a factory item where, according
to Marx, “the process of production disappears in the product.”

In Russia historically, the tradition of icon paintings was innately con-
nected with their painters’ spiritual practice. The search for some sincerity, light
or inhuman absolute could easily be discovered in Michael Larionov’s theories
of Rayonism, in Vladimir Tatlin’s ideas for constructivist towers, or in the am-
bivalent neoplasticism of Vasilii Kandinsky.

The artist, as a member of the creative intelligentsia,* * receives ambig-
uous treatment at the hands of the other classes: suspicion blended with inter-
est and inner respect. The figure of the artist in society, which is structured on
the profit motive, did not attract the attention of the American people until
recently. Now the artist has become more and more of a public image
elaborated by the mass media. At the same time the good artist has now
about the same chance as a good actor in Hollywood. Sometimes, artists here
choose their profession quite randomly, as if they were choosing some tem-
porary business suitable for a particular situation in an everchanging frenetic
environment. According to gallery owner John Weber, “I don’t want an artist who
decides to become an architect, musician, or plumber because of slow sales
during his first five years.” **

Russians are more involved in the concept of shaping the world, rather
than commercial or esthetic values. Communications among creative peo-
ple are based more on exchange, rather than consumption and self-
promotion. In any case, we found that personally we have more in common
with American writers, poets and composers, than with our own artist col-
leagues. The famous American expression "not in ideas but in things” con-
tradicts Russian and European sensibilities- not in things but in ideas.”

Sometimes, under intense social pressure, Russian non-material values
become excessive and theatrical, as the text on one Russian painter’s canvas

* In Soviet terminology intelligentsia denotes a social stratum or class consisting of those
people who work in such fields as science, technology, and culture. There is no cor-
responding term in the English-speaking world for the intellectual community.

* * Laura de Coppet and Alan Johns, The Art Dealers, New York: Clarkson N. Potten, p 203

Vagrich Bakhchanyan, Lolita, NT, 1978, 11" x 9"; 28 cm x 23 cm, collage. ►

shows: “How shall I portray the life of a soul?” This question evoked similar emo-
tions from us, several years later, but of a completely different nature. We were
asked by an artist at the opening of an Eastern European group show in New
York: "How do you write in Russian - from left to right or vice versa?”

Incidentally, we should say that Russians know much more about
Americans, despite the unavailability and the deteriorated form of Soviet
media, than Americans do about their Russian counterparts. Conservative Rus-
sian education, despite overwhelming doses of Marxism-Leninism and its
avoidance of modern issues, does not leave big cultural gaps. The old Russian
custom of questioning everything is at the same time a shield against political
propaganda. The average Russian will display the flag on his house, only if he
is asked to do so by the authorities. It is a regular European custom not to
demonstrate romantic patriotism toward one’s government.

Historically, the American community is based on Protestant in-
dividualism and private property. Russian Sobornost (Ecumenicity) contains as
its central idea the notion of the simultaneous descent of the Holy Ghost on the
whole congregation; this, of course, presumes a general acceptance of collec-
tivism. As Peter Verkhovensky in Dostoevsky’s The Possessed says, the Russian
revolution will unfailingly start with atheism, but in the end Russians would make
“a religion of atheism.”

Now, contemporary Western artists generally refuse to harbor any
nostalgia for their lost faith. Religious programs on TV look like ominous kitsch.
Paradoxically enough, the failure to promote religion produced the opposite
effect. The Russian Orthodox Church, restricted like modern art, led the Rus-
sian intelligentsia to hold a sympathetic and respectable view of it on the in-
tellectual, not the dogmatic level.

The emancipation of women and gay liberation are not issues in Russia
as such movements are a privilege of democratic society; Russia is a world
where there exist equal opportunities for the suppression of all. On the other
hand, historically speaking, women in Russian literature have always been in-
terpreted with delight and respect. Sufficient proof will be found in the heroines
of Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Goncharov or Pasternak. In the history of Russian
Avant-Garde art and poetry, there are many important women who made val-
uable contributions to Russian culture.

The reader might ask why in fact did so many artists and poets leave
Russia, this dangerous but alluring creative undeworld. The constant collision
with the ever vigilant eye of the authorities, the lack of a natural and open en-

Rimma Gerlovina, Hagiography of Man, MY, 1983, 83" x «•" x 4"; 309 «m x 117 cm ►
x 10 cm, plywood covered with fabric, acrylic. The life story is told in a sequence
of scenes from head to feet.

vironment for art, a secluded way of creativity; sooner or later all these factors
become burdensome. Personal fatigue and depressed imagination certainly
do not happily influence the art process.* * For us, that idealistic enjoyment of
art that is not reflected in the surrounding reality is reminiscent of the innocent
pleasures of youth that sooner or later pass. Now that we have left Russia, our
memory receives images that are constantly improving.

Instead of realizing a classless society, the Soviet system has placed ab-
solute ownership of the entire property of the state in the Communist Party,
something that the Rockefellers and the Morgans cannot get in the most un-
bridled capitalism. As Sidney Hook predicted: "The fundamental conflict of our
age is not between capitalism and collectivism, but between democracy and
totalitarianism.” * *

The lack of an art market in the USSR has two sides. The positive one is
that unofficial art is much more independent and survives not through dealers'
merchandizing and promotion, but through pure art itself. There are no curators
or dealers, namely no middlemen, who have become practically a cultural
form in the West. Official Soviet art criticism is too elusive and dogmatic and
operates within the state’s imagery, to have any historical deposit, while unof-
ficial criticism is too weak and underdeveloped. On the other hand, such a
purified art can cause art to shrink into itself, thus slowing growth and fostering
megalomania.

Art competition in the West has a dynamic power that influences
esthetic standards and enjoins self-discipline. Boisterous American business
energy is a permanent vehicle for progress, with this by-product; the mass
media devalue and trivialize culture. The market happily consumes all secon-
dary goods: from the impersonators of rock stars to the imitators of last season’s

• For example, the talented Russian artist Alexander Kosolapov, who did lively Soviet pop
art in the seventies, padded his resume by including such imaginative fictitious group
exhibitions as "Black Sguare” and "Blue Rider" in 1973-74 in Moscow, and especially his
one-man exhibitions in the major official galleries Kuznetskii Most and Begovaya, although
he was not a member of the Artists' Union (catalog of the Bochum Museum exhibition
20 Jahre Unabhaengige Kunst aus der Sowjetunion, 1 979, p. 1 08). In contrast, Soviet art-
ist Dmitry Zhilinskii, member of the Directorate of the Russian and Soviet Artists’ Union and
member of the Academy of Arts, had his first one-man show in Moscow only in February
of 1985.

* * Political Power and Personal Freedom, Criterion, 1959, p. 75

Henry Khudyakov, Day Time I Love MY Jacket, NY, 19T9-81, plastic and handmade
studs, mystic tape and colored doth on white coat, photo and collage.

slick art success. But despite this chaotic environment and sham standards of
judgment, a sense of discovery still goes through the bubbles. Years ago [Dylan
Thomas bitterly remarked in his Collected Letters (MacMillan, 1986): “I went on
all over the States, ranting poems to enthusiastic audiences that, the week
before had been equally enthusiastic about lectures on Railway Development
or the Modern Turkish Essay; and gradually I began to feel nervous
about . . . the job of writing.”

However, an environment of unstable luck and confused pluralism can-
not ensure that many serious American artists will become part of their national
history. The Russian feeling of historicity raises more profound hopes in artists’
hearts. The American mentality has quite a mixed and momentary historical
sense like a snapshot. Warhol’s idea about everybody being "famous for fifteen
minutes” does not make any sense in Russia, because the notion of fame is not
so accidental, and when it arrives, it stays. America, a young optimistic nation,
is still building its history and mythology, in which television plays a very impor-
tant role That is unfortunately noticeable also in its contemporary art language
too. Superman is still younger than Heracles.

Once Paul Zelevansky, an American book artist, told us that the contem-
porary artist always has to struggle as an advertising office. The extreme com-
petition in the art world aggravates this situation. According to The New York
Times, there are about 90,000 artists in New York. This leads one to believe
that we live in a flourishing “beaux art” atmosphere. In spite of all its difficulties
this New Babylon attracts thousands of artists from all over the world, including
Russia.

The USA is the only country in the world that provides equal rights and
opportunities for all newcomers. Americans’ friendly attitudes help emigrants
overcome many psychological difficulties and become a part of this colorful
multilingual world.

Usually, newcomers with simple materialistic aims can adjust much
easier. For example, one of our friends, a Russian sculptor, feels completely at
home here, despite the fact that he does not speak English. When questioned
about this he said: “I do not need to know any language, if I can make a con-
tract for $30,000.” The idealistic part of the Russian character, which does not
appear in the previous example, is usually the reason for nostalgia.

Often the dogmatism of the new emigrants, even of the bohemians, con-
trasts with the flexibility of the American lifestyle and different democratic tradi-
tions based on Western individualism. As a matter of fact, the Russian emigrant’s

d Valery Cerlovin, Two Totems, N.V., 1985, each 75" x 12" x 11" and Statrtase, N.V.,
1986, 120" x 30" x 9", wood, acrylic, syringes.

aggressive anti-communist feelings are often nurtured by his homeland’s col-
lectivism and totalitarian methods. “The Republican Party is able to hit the
Soviets with its big fist of missies," says one of the former members of the Rus-
sian unofficial art movement, who is simultaneously confused by the paradox,
that American intellectuals congenial to him support the political left. The Rus-
sian fear of democratic methods comes from their desperate life experience
under the totalitarian type of socialism. Even the word “socialist” has a different
connotation in our language. This situation reminds us of the famous song by
Russian bard Bulat Okudzhava, who symbolically played on the signs over sub-
way escalators: "Stand on the right; move left.”

Sometimes our barbaric customs mixed with passion are repeated here
on American soil. It is no secret that the ideological, esthetic and moral con-
tradictions in Russia are frequently resolved by physical brawls, like the one be-
tween Malevich and Tatlin, or the cruel escapades of Russian Futurists. In 1982
there was a quite eccentric performance during a ball devoted to the lOOth
anniversary of David Burliuk, the founder of Russian Futurism, in a luxurious house
on Long Island. Several Russian artists, dressed in carnival costumes, excited
by the festive atmosphere beat up one of their compatriots.* Meanwhile on
the floor, completely naked and drunk, poet Konstantin Kuzminsky was sleeping
embracing his wife and his Russian borzoi. Currently expensive paintings by Rus-
sian Futurists observed the new generation’s “Slap in the Face of Public Taste.”

Sometimes we are surprised by the visual similarity of some situations-
between, for example, group underground exhibitions in Moscow apartments
and East Village galleries where small-scale works mingle with good and
amateur pieces. There is an ideological contrast here. Russian artists show in

* The injured party, Victor Tupitsyn, several weeks before had inspired a letter to The Village
Voice (April 13, 1982), signed by his wife Margarita, who emigrated from Russia in 1975
when she was only 19 years old. She wrote: "A new possibility to exhibit publicly ap-
peared and the artistic life in Moscow showed markedly new vigor, a micro-revolution
of sorts. All that repeated history, since it is well known that the Russian Avant-Garde of
the '20’s also reached its apogee when it was supported by the authorities and had
access to the public" Three months earlier, she gave a different account of contem-
porary Russian art: "In Moscow in the mid-seventies (there were) two open-air exhibi-
tions in September 1974 (one of which was stopped by bulldozers). It was precisely at
this time that the artistic life of Moscow showed markedly new vigor, a micro-revolution
of sorts. The two September exhibitions themselves were in a sense happenings with
elements of risk and adventure, during which the artists came in conflict with the
authorities . . .” ( High Performance, Winter 1981-2, p. 1 7)

Invitations for the exhibition Samixdat Art. ►

190

Valery Gerlovin, "A Dove (After Arcimbeldol", from the series Ancient MY Mosaics,
1983, 24" x 34" x 8"; 61 cm x 61 cm x 20 cm, syringes painted with oil on polystyrene
covered with canvas. Photo by Francis Havert.

this way, not only because of the lack of other opportunities, but ideally in op-
position to the official culture and always with a great deal of risk. East Village
galleries appeared first in contrast to commercial Soho, and almost im-
mediately became fashionable entertainment and trendsetters.

Politically conservative, the eighties has had its reflection in art as in a
mirror. The reanimation of expressionism in Germany tends to show the revived
nationalist spirit after WW II; in the USA this revival is connected with a resur-
gence of the art market. The mannerist paraphernalia of the 80s is mainly
bland and borrowed. Perfect artists for Reagan's time like Robert Longo or David
Salle conditionally play the role of an official Academy, which has some
conservative features in common with official Soviet Art. According to
Kierkegaard’s epigrammatic remark, "we live forward, but understand back-
wards.” That is, the academies recognize Cezanne usually one generation too
late. According to art critic Robert Hughes, "there is no historical precedent for
the price-structure of art in the late twentieth century. Never before have the
visual arts been the subject, beneficiary or victim (depending on your view of
the matter) of such extreme inflation and fetishisation.” *

The acceleration of the rate of social change and the repetition of past
patterns in art are peculiar features of our time In the West international avant-
garde theories turn to popular practice, while in Russia they again become
elitist and go deep underground. Now, a relaxed derivative eclecticism, which
replaced post-conceptual melancholy, sets the general mood. The com-
prehensive approach that addresses problems is one of the most
characteristic aspects of Russian art, especially now when the search for new
visual forms is far less important than before.

VAGRICH BAKHCHANYAN

President Reagan's Adviser On
Mail Art

219East84th Street, apt. ID.

New York, N Y. 10028
USA

Robert Hughes, “First Harold Rosenberg Memorial Lecture,” May 13, 1984, Chicago

192

The idea of individualism slowly becomes obliterated by time. There is
a tendency towards homogenization within society and centralization of
political power. Bit by bit, the European countries start to accept socialism. Even
in the USA, small businesses are slowly being replaced by big corporations that
function, with their special social agendas, as states within the state.

Russia was the first modern country which experimented with socialist
society, though with the special feature of an imperialistic dictatorship. The Rus-
sian Avant-Garde, which the authorities kept from public view, was taken
seriously in the West only recently, almost half a century later. Right now, the
ideas of contemporary Russian art, which are very obscure to most Westerners
because their social experience is quite different, can be increasingly
understood.

We view art life synoptically as an interrelated whole: not as a random
mixture, but as an organic union of parts, whose balance is important to main-
tain, as would be the case in any living organism. This idea became the
background for the fifth issue of our magazine Collective Farm, which is ironic-
ally named “Five Year Plan.” * To reveal the exaggerated stratification of artistic
reality in a time of political tension, we have chosen artists and writers of various
nationalities to illustrate the art factory system in a way essentially different from
those methods which capitalist and socialist societies typically use. This is a
mystification of planning, while art is a metaphorical reflection of the world’s
organization.

To put it emphatically, every society tends to unify the human personality.
The problem of creativity is indeed closely linked with freedom and anarchy,
in the true sense of the terms.

The artistic mind has the intuitive ability to understand civilization in all
its syncretism. Through idea, relationship gives meaning to things, while the
universal appears through the particular. To illustrate a principle one must ex-
aggerate much and omit much.

* Collective Farm, edited by Vagrich Bakhchanyan and the Gerlovins at 302 Spring St„
New York, N.Y. 10013

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Russian Samizdat Art-an exhibition organized and designed by Rimma and
Valery Gerlovin.

A musical overture for the exhibition and the performance was composed by
Charlie Morrow.

Participants:

Natalia Abalakova
Andrei Abramov
Nikita Alekseyev
Vagrich Bakhchanyan
Vilen Barsky
Nikolai Bokov
William Brui
Erik Bulatov
Michael Chernyshov
Valery Gerlovin
Rimma Gerlovina
Galina Goloveiko
Goroshko and Clark
Michael Grobman
Ilya Kabakov
Gregory Kapelyan

Komar and Melamid
Henry Khudyakov
Konstantin Kuzminsky
Leonid Kuznetsov
Leo Lapin
Igor Makarevich
Andrei Monastyrsky
Vsevolod Nekrasov
Lev Nussberg
Dmitry Prigov
Lev Rubinshtein
Leonid Sokov
Group Mukhomory
Anatoly Ur
Nikiphor Zayats
Anatoly Zhigalov

The exhibition was held in the following US and Canadian galleries:
Franklin Furnace Gallery, New York City, Feb. 24-April 17, 1982.

Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, N.Y., Sept. 17-Oct. 30, 1982.
Chappaqua Gallery, Westchester, N.Y., Nov. 6-21, 1982.

Washington Project for the Arts, Dec. 3-Jan. 17, 1982-83.

Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York City
(part of the “1984” exhibition), Jan. 26-March 12, 1983.

Anderson Gallery, Commonwealth Univ., Richmond, Virginia, Feb. 15-
March 3, 1983.

Samizdat Art: views of travelling exhibition curated and designed by the
Cerlovins. On the left above: Franklin Furnace Gallery, NY, 1982; below: Hewlett
Gallery, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh. On the left above: Washington
Project for the Arts, Washington, D.C., 1982; below: before the opening at LACE
gallery, LA, during the 1984 Olympic Games.

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Western Front Gallery, Vancouver, Canada, April 19-May 6, 1983.
911 Pine Street Gallery, Seattle, Washington, May 24-June 7, 1983.
Hewlett Gallery, Carnegie-Mellon Univ., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
Nov. 15-Dec. 4, 1983.

LACE Gallery, Los Angeles, California, June 9-Aug. 11, 1984.

PUBLICATIONS

New York Magazine , NY, March 29, 1982, Kay Larson, “The Red Letters”

Artforum , Summer 1982, Ronny H. Cohen, “Russian Samizdat Art”

Umbrella, California, March 1982, Judy Hoffberg, “Russian Samizdat Art”

Ear Magazine, NY, V. 7, #3/4, Elizabeth Cook, “The First Russian Vagabond
Reading Room”

Flue, Franklin Furnace, NY, #2, 1982, R. & V. Gerlovin, “Russian Samizdat
Books”

The Village Voice, March 30, 1982, NY, Lucy Lippard, “Forbidden Fruits”

The Village Voice, April 13, 1982 Letters

Villager, NY, March 18, 1982, Janet Harnik, "This Underground Art”

New American, NY, Feb. 16, 1982, Natalia Sharymova, “Russian Samizdat
(Russian Language)”

New Newspaper, NY, Apr. 24, 1982, V. Zavalishin, "About Two Shows (Russian
Language)”

City Newspaper, Rochester, NY, Sept. 16, 1982, "Opening at Visual Studies
Workshop”

196 Chappaqua Journal, Westchester, NY, Nov. 4, 1982, Royston Wood, “Is Chap-

paqua Ready for Samizdat?”

Chappaqua Journal, Nov. 11, 1982, “Opening Reception of the Russian
Samizdat”

The Washington Post, Dec. 9, 1982, Jo Ann Lewis, “The Vagabond Art of
Modern Russia"

The Washington Times, Dec. 9, 1982, Jane Addams Allen, “An Exciting
Glimpse of Russian Avant-Garde.”

The Washington Times, Dec. 9, 1982, Jane Addams Allen, “Samizdat Artists
Spread the News"

A-Ya, Paris, #4, 1982, “Russian Samizdat Art"

New Russian Word, Jan. 11, 1983, V. Zavalishin, “Selfaffirmation (Russian
Language)”

Exquisite Corpse, Baltimore, Apr. 1983, George Myers Jr„ “Two Mini-
Interviews”

Vanguard, Summer 1983, Canada, Roger Malbert, “Russian Samizdat Art”

Seven Days, Jan. 13, 1984, A. Batchan, “Samizdat as a Media (Russian
Language)”

Novosty, 2.9.1984, V. Zavalishin, “Samizdat in Art (Russian Language)”

1984, Publishers Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, Inc. and The Village Voice “The
Gerlovins”

Los Angeles Times, Sunday June lO, 1984, Josine lanco-Starrels, “Art News at
“LACE”

Los Angeles Downtown News, June 26, 1984, M. Teverbaugh, “Russians Part
Iron Curtain"

Los Angeles Weekly, June 15-21, 1984, Hunter Drohojowska, “Samizdat Art"
Artweek, July 14, 1984, Marina LaPalma, “The Art of Opposition”

LECTURES WITH SLIDESHOW

Bookworks, an international conference of artists, writers
and publishers, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
University of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania)

Carnegie-Melon University, Pittsburgh, PA
Pratt Institute, NYC

New York City University, Baruch College, NYC
Columbia University, NYC
Columbia University, NYC

March 14, 1985

April 30, 1985
Dec. 9, 1985

Nov., 1982
Nov. 15, 1983
Nov. 16, 1983
Feb. 29, 1984

INTERVIEWS

Cable News Network, Washington, DC

Voice of America for the USSR and European Features

Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, video

Dec. 3, 1982
Dec. 3, 1982
March 1983

NOTES TO THE TEXT (Bowlt)

1 . The following publications are of particular relevance to the issue of books compiled
and illustrated by members of the Russian avant-garde: V. Markov: Russian Futurism,
Berkeley: University of California, 1 968; N. Khardzhiev and V. Trenin: Poeticheskaia Kuitura
Maiakovskogo, Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1970; The Print Collector's Newsletter, New York, 1976,
March-April (whole issue devoted to aspects of avant-garde design); & Harrison (com-
piler): Ex Libris 6. Constructivism and Futurism. Russian and Other, New York: Ex Libris, 1 97 7
(this sale catalog carries invaluable bibliographical descriptions of the items offered); S.
Compton: The World Backwards. Russian Futurist Books 1912-16, London: The British Library,

1 978 (a readable, professional appreciation of the main trends in Russian Avant-garde
book design); D Vallier: “Lavant-garde russe et le livre eclate” in Revue de Tart, Paris, 1 979,
October, pp 57-67; GH. Roman: "The Ins and Outs of Russian Avant-garde Books. A History
1910-1932” in The Avant-Garde in Russia, 1910-1930, catalog of the exhibition edited by
S. Barron and M.Tuchman, Los Angeles County Museum, 1980, pp. 1 02-09; G. Janecek:
The Look of Russian Literature, Princeton University Press, 1984 (a scholarly, informative
analysis of the visual poetry of the Russian Cubo-Futurists); C. Leclanche-Boule:
Typographies et photomontages Constructivistes en RUSS, Paris: Papyrus, 1984.

2. The later period of the Urkainian avant-garde, including solid references to the art of
the book, is discussed by M. Mudrak Ciskewycz in her unpublished dissertation: “ 'Nova
generatsiia' ( 1 927-1 930) and the Artistic Avant-Garde in the Ukraine,” University of Texas
at Austin, 1980. Useful information on the Georgian activities is supplied by M. Marzaduri
in his book Dada Russo, Bologna-. Cavaliere Azzurro, 1983; also see M. Marzaduri et al.:
Lavanguardia a Tiflis, Venice: Universita di Venezia, 1 982. The Ukrainians, in particular, pro-

198 duced some very exciting booklets such as Serebrianye truby by E. Bagritsky et al. with

cover by S. Fdzini (Odessa, 1 91 5) and the Pan-Futurist Semafor u Maibytie by M. Semenko
(Kiev, 1 922). Mention might be made of other Cubo-Futurist booklets published outside
the main centers such as Ya. Futur-almanakh vselenskoi egosamosti which contained the
Psycho-Futurist manifesto (Saratov, 1914) and the literary-artistic parody Neo-futurizm
(Kazan, 1913; actually, the “Kazan" printed on the cover may be a hoax and the booklet
might really have been published in Moscow). We should also remember here that many
Cubo-Futurist booklets were compiled and advertised, but, for various reasons, did not,
in fact, appear. Among the more intriguing are the third issue of Sadok sudei (St.
Petersburg, 1913); Kruchenykh's Sinteticheskii bashmak i vorotnichek with illustrations by
Kulbin (St. Petersburg, 1913); Larionov’s Luchistskaia poeziia (Moscow, 1913); and N. Buriiuk's
Sbornik risunkov (a collection of drawings by the Burliuk brothers, St. Petersburg, 1913).

3. Although the Cubo-Futurist and Constructivist books are always described as extremely
rare, they do appear on the market rather often and there are impressive collections of
them, both public and private, in the USSR and in the West. They are regularly included in
auctions, e.g. in Printed Books, Maps and Atlases (London: Sotheby's, 1985, 5 and 19
February) and Continental Illustrated Books (London: Sotheby's, 1985, 20-21 June). There
have been several exhibitions during the last decade or so that have focused attention

on the avant-garde book such as “Russian Avant-Garde" New York: Carus Gallery, 1 975;
"Knizhnye oblozhki russkikh khudazhnikov nachala XX veka," Leningrad: Russian Museum,
1977 (scholarly catalog by E. Kovtun); “Avant-Garde Books from Russia, 1910-1930," New
York: Franklin Furnace, 1 982 (scholarly catalog by G H. Roman); “Russian Works on Paper:
1913-1927," Toledo: Toledo Museum of Art, 1982. In addition, there have been two major
exhibitions devoted to Malevich’s graphic work, including the book contributions, i.e.
“Malevich. The Graphic Work: 1913-1930. A Print Catalogue Raisonne,” Jerusalem: The
Israel Museum, 1975 (scholarly catalog by D Karshan); ‘Journey into Non-Objectivity. The
Graphic Work of Kazimir Malevich and Other Members of the Russian Avant-Garde” Dallas
Museum of Fine Arts, 1980 (scholarly catalog by J. Bowlt).

4. El Lissitzky and Hans Arp ■. Die Kunstismen 1914-1924, Erlenbach-Zurich: Rentsch, 1925.

5. Zina V. was an eleven year old girl whom Kruchenykh included as the coauthor of
Porosiata. This was symptomatic of the Cubo-Futurists' interest in the art of children which
they collected and studied (especially the Burliuks, Chagall, Goncharova, Larionov, and
Alexander Shevchenko). Kruchenykh's gesture was not isolated: Mikhail Matiushin used
a drawing by the seven-year-old niece of his deceased wife the poet Elena Guro, for the
cover of the collection Nebesnye verbliuzhata (St. Petersburg, 1914), and Khlebnikov in-
sisted that two poems by a thirteen-year-old girl be included in Sadok sudei 2 (St.
Petersburg, 1913).

6. The first edition of the Kruchenykh/Khlebnikov Igra vadu appeared in Moscow in 1 91 2
with illustrations by Goncharova; the second appeared in Moscow in 1914 with illustrations
by Rozanova and Malevich. According to the bibliophile Alik Rabinovich of New York there
seems to have even been a third edition published in Moscow in 1919.

7. On Chagall's in-jokes, seeZ. Amishai-Maisels: “Chagall's Jewish Invokes" in Journal of
Jewish Art, Chicago, 1978, Vol. 5, pp. 76-93.

8. D Burliuk et al.: Poshchechina obshchestvennomu vkusu, Moscow, 1912. Translation in
Markov, op. cit., p. 46.

9. D Burliuk: "Golos Impressionista. zashchitu zhivopisi" (1908). Translation in J. Bowlt (ed.):
Russian Art of the Avant-Garde. Theory and Criticism 1902-34, New York: Viking, 1976, p 1 1.

10. G Tasteven: Futurizm, Moscow, 1914.

11. Puni’s Relief with a Plate ( 1 91 9) is in the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart. Although, by and large,
the Russian Cubo-Futurists were not aware of the Dada activities in Zurich and elsewhere
in 1916 onwards, many of their antics and assumptions have close parallels. Puni knew both
Kruchenykh and Rozanova (they were all members of the St. Petersburg Union of Youth),
although the structural resemblance between his relief and their gook is probably
fortuitous.

1 2. While "bibliographically” correct, the dates of these journals are misleading. The last
issues of Mir iskusstva actually appeared in 1905, of Zolotoeruno in 1910 and of Apollon
in 1918.

13. Mention might be made of, for example, Evgenii Teviashov’s Opisanoe neskolkikh
graviur i titografii, St. Petersburg, 1 903; Dmitrii Rovinsky's studies-A//to/a/ Ivanovich Utkin, St.
Petersburg, 1 884; and Russkii graver Chemesov, St. Petersburg, 1878. Vasilii Timm’s Russkii
khudozhestvennyi listok, St. Petersburg, 1 851-62 provides a useful panorama of the Russian
graphic arts in the mid-19th century.

1 4. ie Uvre de la Marquise with Somov’s galant illustrations saw several editions (some less
explicit than others) in French and German. The last edition was published by Golike and
Vilborg in St. Petersburg in 1918.

15. These examples of censor control are quoted in V. Botsianovsky and E. Gollerbakh:

Russkaia satira pervoi revoliutsii 1905-1906, Leningrad, 1925, pp. 11-13.

16. D Burliuk: Poshchechina, op cit. Translation in Markov, op. cit., p. 46.

1 7. Sokrovishcha iskusstv v sharzhakh khudozhnikov A. Radakova, Re-mi, A. Yungera, A.
Yakovleva (no author), St. Petersburg, 1912.

18. a Burliuk, op. cit. Translation in Markov, op. cit., p. 46.

19. Malevich's oil painting, Composition with Mona Lisa (1914), is in a private collection
in Leningrad.

20. A. Kruchenykh: T lile, St. Petersburg, 1914, unpaginated.

21. A. Shevchenko: Neo-primitivizm (1913). Translation in Bowlt, op. cit., p. 45.

22. A. Shevchenko: Printsipy kubizma i drugigh sovremennykh techenii vzhivopisi vsekh
vremen i narodov, Moscow, p. 1 8.

23. N. Goncharova: Preface to catalog of one-woman exhibition, i.e. N. S. Goncharova.
Vystavka kartin 1900-1913. Katatog, Moscow, 1913, p. 3.

24. M. Larionov: “Luchistskaia zhivopis” (1913). Translation in Bowlt, op. cit., p. 97.

25. From a prospectus by Depero for the Chant du Rossignol ( II Canto dell'Usignuolo) on
display at the Civico Museum Depero, Rovereto, Italy.

26. Goncharova’s Airplane above a Train (1913), now in the Kazan Art Museum, was
reproduced in several sources in 1913-14, e.g. in the miscellany Oslinyi khvost i mishen
(Moscow, 1913) and on p. 27 of the catalog of her one-woman show in St. Petersburg in
1914, i.e. Goncharova. It is also reproduced by M. Chamot in her book Gontcharova, Lon-
don: Oresko, 1979, p. 53, and in Compton, op. cit., p. 99.

27. Q Rozanova: “Osnovy novogo tvorchestva i prichiny ego neponimaniia” in Soiuz
molodezhi, St. Petersburg, 1913, No. 3, p. 21. Translation in Bowlt, op. cit., p. 21.

28. Malevich’s 34 risunka, while carrying the date 1920 on the cover, were published at
the beginning of 1 921 . It is generally assumed that Lissitzky, who headed the lithographic
workshop in Vitebsk in 1919-20, supervised the printing of the 34 drawings. See N. Khard-
zhiev, N. Malevich, M. Matiushin: K istorii russkogo avangarda/The Russian Avant-Garde,
Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1 976, p. 96. Lissitzky's folio was called 1. Kestnermappe
and was published in Hanover in 1 923. The word Proun is an acronym for “Proekt utverzh-
deniia novogo" (=“Project for the affirmation of the new”).

29. For pictorial comparisons in sequential order see Karshan, op. cit., pp 138-77.

30. N. Burliuk: "Faktura” in Poshchechina obshchestvennomu vkusu, Moscow, 1912, pp.

1 05-06. Although signed “N. Burliuk,” the text was by David Burliuk.

31 . AERO was published in Vitebsk in 1 920; Put Unovisa in 1921; Unovis in 1 920-21 . For in-
formation see L. Zhadova: Malevich. Suprematism and Revolution in Russian Art
1910-1930, London: Thames and Hudson, 1982, passim. Ermolaeva, a disciple of Malevich
in Vitebsk, created the sets and costumes for the studio production of Victory over the
Sun there in February, 1920 (some costumes also by Malevich). The woodcut design in
question (size of edition unknown) has often been reproduced. See, for example, Die
Kunstismen in Russland/The Isms of Art in Russia 1907-30, catalog of exhibition at the
Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne, 1977, p 54.

32. Lissitzky worked on a number of illustrated books in Kiev, Warsaw, and elsewhere in
191 8-23, using folkloristic motifs. The best collection of such books is in the National Library,
Jerusalem. I am indebted to Professor Seth Wolitz for bringing my attention to these
materials.

33. "The Film of El’s Life" in S. Lissitzky-Kuppers-. El Lissitzky, London-. Thames and Hudson, 1968,
p. 325.

34. Fine examples of Stepanova's graphic poetry are reproduced in the exhibition
catalog Rodcenko/Stepanova. Alle origini del Construttivismo, Perugia: Commune, 1 984.
For reproductions and discussion see E. Kovtun: “Varvara Stepanova’s Anti-Book” in Von
der Flache zum Raum/From Surface to Space. Russia/Russland 1916-1924, catalog of ex-
hibition at the Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne, 1974, pp. 57-63 (Stepanova’s remarkable
Gaush chaba of 1919 is reproduced there on pp. 143-50); A. Lavrentiev: “The graphics of
visual poetry in the work of Varvara Stepanova” in Grafik, Budapest, 1 982, Na 1 , pp. 46-51 .

35. S. Kirsanov: Opyty. Kniga stikhov predvaritelnaia 1925-1926, Moscow-Leningrad, 1927.

36. Mayakovsky, for example, maintained the tradition of the erotic double entendre in
his caption for Rodchenko's poster advertising Soviet pacifiers (1923) reproduced, forex-
ample, in G Karginov: Rodchenko, London: Thames and Hudson, 1979, ill. 84.

37. A number of avant-garde painters who had been especially active in the early 1 920s
such as V. Kozlinsky, V. Lebedev and D Shterenberg “retired" to the more tranquil field of
book illustration (especially for children's stories) in the 1 930s-50s.

38. A number of contemporary Russian artists continue to use the book as a creative
medium, although they have expanded the discipline and connected it to other forms
such as mail art and spontaneous performance Of particular interest are Konstantin K. Kuz-
minsky’s experiments such as his homage to D Burliuk-Wta rodiny (Orange Connecticut:
Goloveiko, 1982). Of equal fascination are the artistic mailings of Tolsty (pseudonym of
Vladimir Kotliarov, now in Paris) and the manuscript, handcolored books by Alexei Polev
(now living in Jerusalem).

APPENDIX (Boiko)

202

The bibliography on the subject provides no full list of artists. It is known from
various sources that in France in the 1920s and 1930s the following artists
stayed for some time or forever. The list covers the first and second waves of
emigration:

Nikita Alekseyev

Simone Lissim

Mikhail Andreenko

Georges Lukomsky

Yurii Annenkov

Anatolii Lunacharsky

Alexander Arkhipenko

Philip Maliavin

Alexander Arnshtam

Mane-Katz

Leon Bakst

Meschaninov

Vladimir Baranov-Rossine

Adolphe Milman

Victor Barthe

Abraham Mintchine

Alexander Benois

Vladimir Naidich

Ivan Bilibin

Anton Pevsner

Boberman

Serge Poliakov

Marc Chagall

Jean Pougny / Ivan Puni

Jacques Chapiro

Alexei Remizov

Sergei Charchune

Nicholas Roerich

Isaac Dobrinsky

Genia Rubin

Mstislav Dobujinsky

Rybak

Naum Gabo

Vasilii Schukhaev

Olga Glebova-Soudeikina

Konstantin Somov

Alexandra Exter

Savely Sorin

Alexander Fasini

Chaim Soutine

Serge Ferat / Yastchembsky

Sergei Soudeikine

Natalia Goncharova

Nicholas de Stael

Boris Grigoriev

Dmitrii Stelletzky

Hosyasson

Leopold Survage

Vasilii Kandinsky

Pavel Tchelischev

Michel Kikoine

Tereshkovich

Konstantin Korovin

Maria Vasiliev

Pinchus Kremegne

Lazar Volovick

Andre Lanskoy

Georgii Yakulov

Michael Larionov

Leon Zak

Jacques Lipchitz

Ilya Zdanevich

Sources: Exhibition catalogues-Mrf Russe a Paris en 1921; Galerie La Boetie,
1921; Art Russe Moderne, Paris 1928. Publications-f.es Artistes Russes a Paris,

Centre George Pompidou; Journees de la Culture Russe en France, Annex for
the exhibition Salon des Independents, Grand Palais, Paris 1985.

Acknowledgment: I would like to express my appreciation to Mrs. Valentine
Marcade and Mr. Jean-Claude Marcade from Paris for the important help they
have given me in this work.

NOTES

TORS

204

Szymon bojko is an art critic and historian currently residing in Warsaw,
Poland. His publications include Polish Poster Art: Its Origins and Development
to 1939; The Polish Poster Today; New Graphic Design in Revolutionary Russia;
RotSchlagt Weiss. Mr. Bojko was also editor of Projekt (Visual Arts and Design
Review) and editor in chief of Polish Arts Review from 1 969 to 1974. He was a con-
sultant for Contemporary Artists and Contemporary Designers, St. Martin’s Press,
and has been a recent Visiting Lecturer at the Rhode Island School of Design.

JOHN E. bowlt is a specialist in Russian Constructivist art, and currently
teaches in the Department of Slavic Languages at the University of Texas in
Austin. Mr. Bowlt is also Director of the Institute of Modern Russian Culture. Mr.
Bowlt has published extensively on 19th and 20th century Russian art.

RIMMA AND valery gerlovin are artists currently living in New York City.
The Gerlovins have collaborated for a number of years in their native Russia and
in the United States. Their work has appeared in numerous exhibitions, including
the Venice Biennale and the UNESCO show in Mexico City, and has been
reviewed in Artforum, The Village Voice and many other art periodicals. The
Gerlovins also curated the "Russian Samizdat Art” exhibition, which is currently
travelling throughout the United States and Canada.

Charles DORIA, poet and writer, has been living in New York City since 1976.
He recently completed a translation of Giordano Bruno’s last published work
De compositione imaginum (1591) and compiled Assembling 12, a col-
laborative artist-book anthology. His other publications include four books of
poetry: The Game of Europe (Ohio Univ. Press, 1981 ) and three volumes in a con-
tinuing series of minimal texts: Short (1980), Short r (1983) and Shortendi, 1985),
as well as two anthologies, Origins: Creation Texts from the Ancient Mediterra-
nean (1976) and The Tenth Muse: Classical Drama in Translation (1980).
Presently he teaches at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University,
where he edits and publishes Assembling Press.

INDEX

Abalakova, Natalia 136
Abramov, Andrei 126, 128, 129
Agin, Alexander 18
Akhmadulina, Bella 178
Akhmatova, Anna 51
Alekseyev, Nikita 126, 136
Alexandre, Arsene 43
Alexeyev, Alexei 83
Aliagrov 14
Altman, Natan 47, 49
Anarfuts (Uktuss) 157
Anisfeld, Boris 43, 59
Annenkov, Yurii 52, 55
Apollinaire, Guillaume 25, 54, 55
Arbenev, R. 1 57

Arkhipenko, Alexander 47, 49, 59,
62

Arp, Hans lO
Artyomov, Vyacheslov 151
Aygi, Gennadii 72
Azbe, Anton 40
Bakhchanyan, Vagrich 98, 99,
lOl, 104, 105, 108, 151, 183
Bakst, Leon 1 6, 43, 44, 45
Balanchine, George 55
Balmont, Konstantin 12, 129
Barsky, Vilen 116
Barthe, Victor 52
Basilova, Alyona 75
Bekhteiev 40
Belenok, Peter 103
Bely, Andrei 1 3, 47
Belyutin, Elii 72

Benois, Alexander 14, 16, 17, 18, 43
Bentivoglio, Mirella 176

Berdiaev, Nikolai 50, 53, 54
Bertlmann, Renate 83
Bertrant, Jules 43
Bilibin, Ivan 17,20
Blake, William 49
Blaue Reiter 40, 42
Boberman 52
Bobrov, Sergei 24, 26
Boccioni, Umberto 28
Bogomazov, Alexander 29
Bokov, Nikolai 157
Bokshtein, Ilya 157
Borodin, Alexander 45
Braque, Georges 26
Breton, Andre 49,176
Briusov, Valerii 12,13
Brodsky, Alexander 73
Bronislava 55
Brown, Jean 176
Brui, William 153
Bulatov Eric 71,123
Bulgakov, Sergei 54
Burliuk, David lO, 13, 14, 18, 19, 20,
22, 25, 30, 35, 59, 126, 188
Burliuk, Maria 59

Burliuk, Nikolai 13, 14, 18, 20, 22, 35

Burliuk, Vladimir 9, 13, 18, 20, 22, 35

Cage, John 76

Carra, Carlo 26

Castelli, Leo 177

Cendrars, Blaise 31

Cezanne, Paul 55, 191

Chachko, Alex 76

Chagall, Marc 12,52,53,80

Chekhonin, Sergei 14, 16, 18

206

Chemiakin, Michael 1 51 , 1 56
Chernyshov, Michael 143, 144
Chuikov, Ivan 83, 145
Collective Actions Group 126,136
Cub, Ludvik 40
CZ 147

Dabrowsky, Jan-lvan 59, 62
(=Graham, John)
de Kooning, Willem 22
Delauney, Sonia 31
Demykin, Andrei 1 36
de Noailles, Anna 43
Depero, Fortunato 26
de Stael, Nicholas 53, 54
Diaghilev, Sergei 1 7, 26, 42, 43, 45
Dobujinsky, Mstislav 16, 17, 20, 59
Donskoi, Gennady 147
Dostoevsky, Fyodor 21,54,86,178,
182

Dubuffet, Jean 151
Duchamp, Marcel 177
Dudinsky, Igor 76
Dunkel, Eugene 59
Dvizheniye (Movement) 72
Dyachenko, V. 157
Efros, Abram 51 , 52
Ehrenburg, Ilya 21, 46, 47, 48, 49
Elinbaum, Felix 151
Erl, Vladimir 73
Ermolaeva, Vera 30
Ernst, Max 176
Evreinov, Nikolai 21
Evtushenko, Evgenii 75,178
Exter, Alexandra 13,48,52,53
Filonov, Pavel 10,13,25,28,31
Flaubert, Gustave 45
Florensky, Pavel 53
Fly-agarics (Mukhomory) 147,150,
167

Fokine, Alexander 54
Football 147
Forsh, Olga 31
G, V. 150,151

Gabo, Naum 47, 49, 123
Galamaga, A. 157
Galetsky, Yuri 73
Galich, Alexander 86
Gambrell, Jamey 123
Garbovsky, Gleb 73
Gauguin, Paul 25, 26
Gavriljchik, Vladlen 157
George, Waldemar 54
Gerlovin, Valery 77,81,109,148,
149, 157, 163, 165, 168, 170, 171,
182

Gerlovina, Irina 159
Gerlovina, Rimma 70,75,81,136,
157, 159, 164, 171, 187
Gibson, Katherine 43
Ginsberg, Allen 178
Gippius, Zinaida 50
Girshman, Vladimir 17
Glaskov, Nikolai 69
Glazunov, Ilya 122
Glebova-Soudeikina, Olga 51
Glezer, Alexander 60
Gnezdo 147
Gogol, Nikolai 18,103
Gollerbakh, Erik 18
Golomshtok, Igor 60
Goloveiko, Galina 125
Golovin, Alexander 43
Goncharov, Ivan 86, 1 82
Goncharova, Natalia 9,11,18,19,
22 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 35, 44, 51, 52,
53, 54, 55, 81
Gorky, Arshile 59, 62
Grabar, Igor 40
Grabovsky, Ivan 20
Graham, John 59, 62
(= Dabrowsky, Jan-lvan)

Gribkov, Vitaly 147
Grigoriev, Boris 53
Grobman, Michael 151
Grohmann, Will 42
Grosz, Georg 62

Grzhebin, Zinovii 20
Gubanov, Leonid 75, 157
Gundlakh, Sven 147,174
Guro, Elena 9,10,28
Hakovlev 52
Hauert, Francis 52,171
Hellerman, Bill 177
Hoffmann, Hans 62
Hook, Sidney 184
Hosyasson 52
Hughes, Robert 191
(llyazdl Ilya Zdanevich 55
(See Zdanevich, Ilya)

Izdebsky, Vladimir 40
Jacobson, Roman 49
Johns, Alan 176

Kabakov, Ilya 71,81,93,95,98,129
Kamensky, Alexei 147
Kamensky, Vasilii 13,19,25,33,37
Kandinsky, Vasilii 9, 40, 42, 86, 180
Kapelyan, Gregory 153
Kardovsky, Dmitry 40
Kaufman, Bel 178
Keats, John 1 76
Kharitonov Evgeny 76, 146, 147
Kharms, Daniil 78,93,146
Khlebnikov, Velimir 9, lO, 11, 12, 13,
25,27,28,128,157
Khodasevich, Vladislav 47
Kholin, Igor 71, 72
Khudyakov, Henry 86, 90, 91 , 93
Khutsiyev, Marlen 164
Khvostenko, Alexe 73,154
Kierkegaard, Soeren 191
Kiesler 62
Kim, Yulii 86
Kirsanov, Semen 33
Kiselyov, Alex 76,83,151
Kizevalter, Goga 126
Klutsis, Gustav 33
Kogan 40
Kolesnikov Sergei 1 8
Komar, Vitaly 104,119,120,121,

122,123,151,157,164,171,176
Konchalovsky, Petr 49
Konnienkov, Sergei 51
Konstrictor, Boris 157
Kosolapov, Alexander 184
Kotliarov, Vladimir 151
(=Tolsty)

Kovshin, V. 157
Kropivnitsky, Evgeny 71,72
Kropivnitsky, Lev 71
Kropivnitsky, Valentina 71
Kruchenykh, Alexei 9, lO, 11, 12, 14,
18, 19, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 157
Kulbin, Nikolai 11,21,22
Kuzminsky, Konstantin 73,126,156,
188

Lanskoy, Andre 53,54
Lapin, Leo 157

Larionov, Michael 9,10,12,18,19,
22, 23, 25, 26, 28, 35, 51, 52, 53, 54,
55, 56,81,180
Lassav 62

Last Chance 76,147
Lebedev Vladimir 20
Leman, 1.1. 16
Len, Vladislav 75
Leshchenko, Petr 73
Levitin, Valentin 71,157
Lidin 50
Lifar, Serge 55
Limonov, Eduard 76, 108
Lionozovo Group 71
Lipchitz, Jacques 59
Lissim, Simone 59
Lissitzky, El 9, lO, 21, 25, 29, 30, 31,
32, 33, 34, 47, 49
Longo, Robert 191
Luening, Otto 177
Lumiere 95

Lunacharsky, Anatolii 51,52
M., Alexander 105,108
Magritte, Rene 93
Makarevich, Igor 138,142,143

207

Malevich, Kazimir 8,9,10,11,12,18,
19, 21, 22, 23, 25, 28, 80, 86, 125,

188

Mandelshtam, Roald 157

Mandelstam, Osip 179

Mane-Katz 52

Marc, Franz 40

Marcade, Jean-Claude 54, 64

Marcade, Valentine 40, 50, 54, 64

Margo, Boris 59

Marx, Karl 176,180

Mashkov, Ilya 49

Massin 55

Masterkova, Lidiya 71
Matisse, Henri 25, 26
Matiushin, Mikhail lO
Mayakovsky, Vladimir 9, 18, 19, 20,
25, 33, 35, 46, 47, 49, 68, 91, 105
Meel, Raul 157

Melamid, Alexander 119, 120, 121,
122,123,151,157,164,171,176
Mikhnov-Voitenko, Evgeny 157
Minsky 47
Miro, Joan 151
Mironenko, Sergei 147
Mironenko, Vladimir 147
Mitrokhin, Dmitrii 16
Mnatsakanova, Elizaveta 136,138
Moch-Bickert, Eliane 51
Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo 33
Monastyrsky, Andrei 76, 126, 128,
129, 130, 136, 167, 171
(=Sumnin)

Morozov, Savva 60
Movement (Dvizheniye) 123
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 54
Mukhomory (Fly-agarics) 147, 148,
171,174

Nadelman, Elia 62
Narbut, Georgii (Yurii) 16
Neiman, Boris 151
Neizvestny, Ernst 72
Nekrasov, Vsevolod 72, 113, 116,

151

Nemukhin, Vladimir 71
Neutra, Richard 62
Nietzsche, Friedrich 86
Nijinsky, Vaslav 54
Nijinsky, Bronislava 54
Nikonova, Ry 157
Nussberg, Lev 72,123,126
Oberiu 78,108
Okudzhava, Bulat 86, 188
Oleinikov, Vladimir 75
Oleshkovsky, Yuzef 86
Panitkov, Nikolai 126
Pascin, Jules 62

Pasternak, Boris 47, 68, 86, 91 , 1 82

Pavlov, Ivan 1 8

Peredvizhniki 81

Pevsner, Anton 123

Picasso, Pablo 26, 49, 55, 91, 151

Pilniak, Boris 46

Pivovarov, Victor 71

Platonov, Andrei 86

Poiret 44

Pollock, Jackson 120
Polonsky, Vilacheslav 1 8
Popova, Lyubov 49
Pougny, Jean 14,47,49,52
(See Puni, I.)

Pozner, Vladimir 55
Prigov, Dmitry 113,157
Prokofiev, Sergei 55
Puni, Ivan 14, 47, 49, 52
(See Pougny, Jean)

Pushkin, Alexander 19,21,54,86
Putov 1 57
Rabin, Oscar 71,82
Radakov, Alexei 22
Ray, Man 33
Remizov, Alexei 49, 50
Remizov, Nikolai (Re-mi) 20,21,22,
46

Repin, Ilia 18
Rilke, Rainer Maria 54

Rodchenko, Alexander 9, 33, 35, 37
Roerich, Nicholas 43, 45
Roginsky, Michael 144
Rogovin, I. 28
Roshal, Michael 147
Roszak, Theodore 62
Rothko, Mark 62

Rozanova, Olga 9, 11, 14, 22, 23, 25,
28, 29, 31

Rozanov, Vasili 16
Rubinshtein, Lev 76, 109, HO
Rubtsov, Nikolai 73
Rybak 52
Salle, David 191
Sandler, Gosha 110
Sapgir, Genrikh 71,72,76,146
Satunovsky, Yan 72
Schedrin (Saltykov), Mikhail 50
Scherbatov, Sergei 42
Schjeldahl, Peter 93
Schler, Lucien 55
Schnabel, Julian 122
Schukhaev, Vasilii 51
Schukin, Sergei 60
Senkin, Sergei 33
Serebriakova, Zinaida 51
Severini, Gino 26
Severyanin, Igor 47
Shablavin, Sergei 83
Shahn, Ben 62
Shchapova, Elena 157
Shebuev, N. G. 20
Shelkovsky Igor 83
Shklovsky, Victor 47, 49
Shkolnik, Iosif lO
Shostakovich, Dimitry 177
Shterenberg, David 47, 49, 51
Sigei, Sergey 157
Skersis, Victor 147
SMOG 73
Sobolev, Yuri 71,151
Sokolov, V. G. 37
Sokolov-Mikitov 46

Sokov, Leonid 83

Solovev, Vladimir 53

Somov, Konstantin 14, 16, 17, 18

Sooster, Ulo 71

Sorokin, Vladimir 147

Sosnora, Victor 73

Soyer, Raphael 59, 62

Sretensky Boulevard 69

Stella, Joseph 59

Stepanova, Varvara 9,25,31,32,

33,37

Stravinsky, Igor 45, 55
Struve, Pavel 49, 50
Suetin, Nikolai 33
Sumnin 129

(=Monastyrsky)

Sysoyev, Vyacheslav 1 74
Taigin, Boris 73
Tanning, Dorothea 1 76
Tasteven, Genrikh 12, 13
Tatlin, Vladimir 9, 28, 48, 80, 86,

180, 188
Teffi 50

Telingater, Solomon 33
Thomas, Dylan 187
Tolstoy, Alexei 46
Tolstoy, Leo 18,21,86
Tolsty 151

(=Vladimir Kotliarov)

Tsvetayeva, Marina 46, 51, 176
Tupitsyn, Margarita 188
Tupitsyn, Victor 188
Turgenev, Ivan 182
Tvardovsky, Alexander 178
TwomblyCy 151
Tworkov, Jack 62
Udaltzova, Nadezhda 48
Uktuss (Anarfuts) 157
Ur, Anatol 143,144
V., Zina 1 1
Vasiliev, Oleg 71
Vechtomov, Nikolai 71
Verefkin, Marianna 40

Vereshchagin, Vasilii A. 1 6
Verkhovensky, Peter 1 82
Vermeer 54
Vint, Tynis 157
Vishnevskaya, Yulya 75
Voinov, Vsevolod 1 8
Volokhonsky, Anry 157
Voznesensky, Andrey 75, 178
Vrubel, Mikhail 12
Vvedensky, Alexander 78
Vysotsky, Vladimir 86
Warhol, Andy 187
Weber, John 180
Yakovlev 52, 54
Yakulov, Georgii 48
Yankilevsky, Vladimir 71
Yaschenko, Alexander 47
Yavlensky, Alexei 40
Yelagina, Elena 142
Yesenin, Sergei 46
Yulikov, Alexander 83
Zabolotsky, Nikolai 78
Zak, Leon 52
Zakharov, Vadim 147
Zakharov-Ross, Igor 157
Zaretzky 50
Zayats, Nikiphor 43
Zdanevich, Ilya 55,56,57,157
Zelevansky, Paul 187
Zhigalov, Anatoly 1 36
Zhilinsky, Dimitry 184
Zoschenko, Mikhail 50
Zvezdochetov, Konstantin 147

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